The Red Pill Movement (MGTOW): Men Waking Up as Loners

In contrast to the “pickup artists” (PUA), some men have “taken the red pill” when their relationships with women went sour and have chosen what would traditionally be called the bachelor route.

The MGTOW symbol

These are the MGTOW (pronounced MIG-tau): “Men Going Their Own Way.” The singular is MGHOW: “Man Going His Own Way.”

If you spend any time reading MGTOW websites and forums, you’ll find them populated largely by men who have had hellaciously bad experiences in their relationships with women, and who have decided to opt out. Some continue to have one-night stands with women or use the services of prostitutes in order to satisfy their sex drive. Others “go monk” and become celibate. In this community, men actually brag about being virgins.

Needless to say, PUAs despise MGTOW as Dorito-munching, mother’s-basement-dwelling losers who are sad and lonely because they could never get a girl. And MGTOW despise PUAs as preening, hormone-driven pretty boys whose whole life revolves around the women they despise.

And MGTOW as a group do despise women.

These Red Pill men have woken up, not so much as losers, but as loners.

Most of them had their brush with women, got burned—sometimes quite badly—and decided that it’s better not to play with fire.

And if a man wants to be single, that’s certainly his choice. There have been single men throughout the ages. Some of them have done great things.

The problem is not so much in their deciding to become single, but in their intense disdain for and even hatred of women, and in their blaming women for all of their problems as men.

The MGTOW movement has also gone through some changes over the years since it first identified itself in the early 2000s. For the “old school” view, see the blog “NO MA’AM” (now apparently inactive) and the original “MGTOW Manifesto”—which lacks the later hostility against women and the “marriage strike” that characterizes much of the MGTOW community today. Today’s MGTOW community is represented in the blog and forums at MGTOW.com and in the MGTOW subreddit at Reddit.com.

For men in the MGTOW community, these websites are breezy island havens from a hostile, gynocentric, man-hating world. For people not in the MGTOW community, they commonly look more like festering swamps of misogynistic bigotry.

AWALT?

In fact, one of the core dogmas of the Red Pill movement generally, and MGTOW specifically, is represented by the acronym “AWALT.” Here’s how it is defined at the RationalWiki’s slightly satirical “Manosphere glossary” (which is worth reading for its entertainment value alone):

All women are like that

Abbreviation: AWALT

In direct opposition to not all women are like that, the assertion that all women are like that means that females are hard-wired to respond to certain situations in a certain way; and that, more specifically, if given the opportunity, they will tend to behave as manipulative, abusive, sociopathic, destructive, drama-oriented liars. To the extent that women differ from one another, it is in how and to what extent (rather than whether) they manifest these traits when they are allowed to do so.

If you go into a MGTOW forum and say, “Not all women are like that!” (which has its own acronym: NAWALT), you will quickly be shouted down as an infidel and a heretic. AWALT is ex cathedra. It’s an established article of faith. You’re not allowed to question it.

And the MGTOW sites and forums are full of fervent testimonials to AWALT.

See, for example, the article “Comments from Married Men” at MGTOW.com. It extracts comments from one of its forums on that subject, arranging them in nine sections that have no immediately discernible thematic organization. But the overall theme and message is crystal clear: DON’T BE AN IDIOT LOSER AND GET MARRIED! You’ll regret it every single day for the rest of your life!!!

You’ll regret it because the very second you slip the wedding ring onto her finger, your fun, intelligent, gorgeous, sex-loving soulmate will instantly transform into a fat, lazy, whining, nagging bitch who will never have sex with you again. The day after the wedding she will quit her job and flop down on the couch in front of the TV with a Dove Bar in each fist while simultaneously spending all of your money on plastic crap at Walmart and threatening to clean you out of everything you own if you don’t work 80 hours a week to feed her insatiable desire for clothing, shoes, jewelry, and a much bigger house than this hovel we live in.

Read ’em and weep!

Of course, it’s a self-selecting group. Men in happy marriages don’t go to MGTOW forums on the Internet and recount in lurid detail exactly how execrably atrocious their wife or ex-wife is.

But for those men who do have the misfortune of marrying a captivating young beauty who in the harsh light of the morning turns out to be a lazy, gold-digging harpy, the experience can be so traumatizing that when they see or think “woman,” that image of woman completely fills their field of vision. Nothing else exists.

And so they console one another: “AWALT, man!”

The fully realized MGHOW

Here is the abridged testimonial of a successful MGHOW from the above-linked article:

Thanks to going to bed at 5:30AM after a relaxing night of surfing the internet and watching porn, I slept in a little bit late this morning. It was actually the afternoon – 12:25PM to be exact – when I finally sat up in bed, yawning and scratching my big bachelor nuts. . . .

So, anyway, I’m up at half-twelve. I had a nice cigarette whilst checking my e-mails. Then I had a coffee and another cigarette whilst playing a bit of Soldier of Fortune II until I got bored of shooting virtual people’s virtual brains out. A nice big fry-up followed. Mmmm… sausages and bacon. . . . Come two o’clock and I’m down at the local supermarket. I bought some booze, hamburgers, potatoes, bacon and waffles. I also bought some pizza that, right at this moment in time, I’m currently stuffing into my mouth. Munch munch. I’m also currently watching Beavis & Butthead. I downloaded a few episodes via BitTorrent the other day. It’s not even six and I’m pleasantly drunk, eating pizza and watching some great comedy. What’s planned for this evening? I’ll probably have a nice relaxing bath and read Viz whilst I’m soaking in the tub. Then I’ll probably have a few more glasses of wine and watch some of the many South Park and The Simpsons episodes that are lying around the Hard Drives of my five computers. Also, I’ve just reinstalled Deus Ex and I’d like to play some of that too. Who knows what the future may bring? Whatever I want it to, that’s what.

Are we supposed to be impressed?

As I was reading through this rambling Paean to the Modern Neanderthal Man, it actually started to get funny. I started thinking: This is just too perfect! Maybe the joke’s on us. Maybe this was written as a satirical caricature of a MGHOW. Maybe it will end with the punch line, “Hello, my name is ____, and I’m a MGTOW loser. But at least I don’t have to deal with a nagging bitch of a wife!”

But no, he was serious. He ended with this:

If I was married I would probably be standing in a stupid department store right now, looking at my watch and tutting whilst the wife decides which dress she’s only going to wear once she wants to buy with my money! But I’m not married. I’m an eternal bachelor. To put it another way, I’m eternally happy and free.

“Eternally happy and free” to do what? Totally waste your life?

Yes, my subheading is satirical. I’m well aware that there have been and still are many single men who do great things with their lives. And I’m sure there are many decent and productive men in the MGTOW community.

But with “testimonials” like that, is it any wonder that MGTOW have gotten a reputation for being Dorito-munching, mom’s-basement-dwelling losers?

AWALT is no excuse for LOSER

Okay, “LOSER” isn’t really an acronym for anything in the Red Pill movement.

But many of these Red Pill men, including a disproportionate percentage of MGTOW, have come to the conclusion that their life sucks and that it’s all because of those horrible, horrible females.

So once again I’ll say to Red Pill men: Stop blaming women for your problems. It’s not manly. And it gets you nowhere.

If you’ve hitched yourself to a woman who tears you down and sucks you dry, then by all means do what’s necessary to extricate yourself from the situation. Or if that’s not possible (due to children, etc.), then take whatever steps you need to keep yourself sane.

But you still have to be a man.

You still have to take responsibility for your own life.

You still have to follow your own goals and ideals, and work toward accomplishing something you believe in.

There are many men who are stuck in sucky marriages but who still do great things. They have drive, ambition, and a vision of what they want to accomplish.

Of course, they would prefer to have a good marriage too. But they don’t let their bad marriage stop them from accomplishing their goals. For such a man, the focus is on accomplishments in the world of business or finance or politics or art. Where the money that flows from those accomplishments goes is a secondary consideration. So even if their gold-digging wives or ex-wives are bleeding them dry financially, they keep right on going.

I’m not saying this is a good situation. I’m not saying it’s right for women to leech off of men. Quite the contrary. Some women are indeed blood-sucking gold-diggers. And that is to their great shame.

Rather, I’m saying that if your focus is on money, possessions, and property, then a gold-digging wife is a life-ending disaster for you. But if your focus is on accomplishing something good and worthwhile in the world, you can keep being a winner as a man even if you are the loser financially in marriage or in divorce court.

So do what it takes to make your life work. Extricate yourself from a bad marital situation if you can. Protect what assets you can protect. But don’t blame your terrible wife, or that terrible, blood-sucking female race, or those terrible feminazis, if you are a failure as a man. That’s on your shoulders.

Men must take responsibility for themselves

So to the MGTOW specifically I say: If you want to be single, no problem. That’s your choice.

But take responsibility for your own life. Do something good and productive with your time, energy, and talents. Don’t let your bad experiences with women be an excuse to check out of society and waste away your life in some isolated man cave.

Once again, I speak from experience. I’ve been through the whole thing. When I was young (24, to be exact) and even more foolish than I am today, I married the wrong woman (we were not the best match for each other), and proceeded to have a marriage that was fine at first, but gradually went downhill until it ended in divorce twenty-four years later. By the time the divorce was final, I had spent half of my life in a deteriorating marriage.

Was that my former wife’s fault? It would be nice to be able to blame her. But the fact of the matter is that I was the headstrong young male who pursued her for nine years until she finally agreed to marry me. And though she is, of course, responsible for her own decision to marry me and for whatever she did during the marriage, I can’t avoid responsibility for the fact that I made and pursued the decision to marry her despite many indications that it wasn’t such a great idea.

And when the mismatched marriage finally broke up, it was my job to pick up the pieces of my own life and continue on to accomplish what I am here on earth to do.

That’s what it means to be a man. And the original MGTOW philosophy was not about dissing, denigrating, and blaming women, but about achieving one’s best potential as a man, regardless of what women do.

For some men this will mean being single. For others it will mean being in a relationship or a marriage with a woman.

Either way, a man is responsible for his own life. If you make bad choices or get yourself into bad relationships, that is still your responsibility.

So although I know the men in the Red Pill movement hate to hear it, I’ll say again, as I said at the end of the first article in this series:

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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.

81 comments on “The Red Pill Movement (MGTOW): Men Waking Up as Loners”

Good articles about the whole red pill movement, on MGTOW you know that there are several acronyms that are used and one that was not in this article was “red pill rage” this refers to men waking up to society and that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and this is where men can sometimes falter by staying in this phase.

This is obviously not good because these men are still letting others have power other them they aren’t really MGTOW, and they need to move on and make something of themselves just like you have stated in this article and not continue to believe that women are these sweet angels that are the centre of their world.

Anyways good balanced article I am tempted to post these articles on a MGTOW comments section on youtube to see what they think these.

Thanks. I’m glad you liked the articles—especially since you were one of the people who prompted me to write them.

I agree with you 100% that as long as men let others (in this case, toxic women) have power over them, they aren’t really MGTOW. That’s my biggest problem with the MGTOW movement as it now exists: It’s still heavily stuck in blaming women. And as long as you blame someone else for your problems, you are not taking responsibility for them yourself—and you are also taking the power out of your own hands to do something about your life.

You’re welcome to post links to the articles if you like. I don’t expect men in the movement to appreciate them, but maybe it will give a few of them something to think about. Someone did link to the first article in the series on the MGTOW subreddit, which led to a spike in hits that lasted for about 24 hours.

Reading MGTOW posts on forums and Reddit and saying you understand MGTOW is like reading letters from 3rd graders and saying you understand literature. Most of the guys on these forums are new to MGTOW and, like you said, are just getting over a string of horrible experiences with women. They’re in the process of reshaping their identities and it’s not pretty, but it is necessary.

Your an ordained minister? Some men who find MGTOW have lost their houses, their children, their wife and half of their property all in the same week. If you were counseling them would you say “hey man, I know you had a bad week, but you need to get over it?”

If you’ve never been through a situation like that, bully for you. But for people who have lived through something that forces them to confront all of the assumptions they had about men, women, family, society and relationships, words can’t really describe how awful it is to have your identity eviscerated in that way — or how painful it is to rebuild yourself from the rubble.

Instead of mocking these men, you would do well to try to put yourself in their shoes. If you can’t do that, you’re just part of the misandry and gynocentrism MGTOW fights and you’re every bit as bad as the feminists.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to respond, and for the link.

As a matter of fact, I did go through all of that, and I did have to rebuild my life from the rubble.

It took longer than a week, but within a fairly short time I lost job, career, property, and everything else you mention except for my children—whom, as I said in the first article in the series, I was able to continue to be an active father to for the rest of their growing up years. Other than that, nearly everything from my former life, which had been stable for over a decade, is now long gone. I was able to walk away a free man who still had a relationship with his children. But other than that, in the end I lost everything. Not half. Everything but some personal possessions. This was not only because of my ex-wife and the divorce, but due to the whole circumstance of my life at the time based largely on decisions I had made myself. So once again, I don’t blame my ex-wife for it. And this isn’t a self-therapy blog, so I don’t spend time talking about it here. But it took me years to claw my way over the rubble and out of that bomb crater.

In short, I’m not just talking out of my ass. I know exactly what it feels like, because I’ve been through it myself.

And of course I don’t know as much about the MGTOW movement as you and others in the movement do. However, it was months ago that some of my readers asked if I would write something about the Red Pill movement, so I started paying attention to it and researching it. I’ve read many articles by MGTOW leaders and by standard news outlets about the Red Pill movement, as well as spending time reading the forums at Reddit and MGTOW.com. Does that make me an expert on MGTOW? No. And I don’t claim to be one. But it was enough to give me the gist and flavor of the movement. And in my articles I focused on what seemed to me to be most important to say about it to my readers and to any Red Pill men who happen to stop by here and read the articles.

You could say that as a philosophy MGTOW does not hate women, and perhaps that’s true. But as a practical reality, MGTOW articles and forums are dripping with disdain for and yes, hatred of women. AWALT by itself is an example of caricaturing the worst aspects of women and tarring all women with the same biased brush. So you can quibble about whether or not it is “hatred” of women, and whether that is part of the “philosophy” of MGTOW, but the effect is the same: women are seen as defective creatures who are inferior to men, and as a major component of men’s problems, if not the major component—and are treated as such.

Nor am I particularly impressed with blaming it on nature rather than blaming it on women. My response to that is the same: suck it up. You’re still a man, and you still have to take responsibility for your own life. Everyone faces difficult circumstances. What separates the men from the boys is that the men recognize the circumstances and don’t use them as an excuse for paralysis and inaction. Men have been facing these circumstances for hundreds of thousands of years now. And we seem to have survived as men.

If circumstances have changed and what worked for thousands of years no longer works, then by all means go ahead and work to change the societal situation to the extent that it’s possible. We live at a time in human history when a massive paradigm shift is taking place, starting several centuries ago with the Age of Enlightenment. I have no quarrel with Red Pillers and MGTOW working to make the world a better place for men (though that seems to be mostly an MRA thing). But I do have a quarrel with their saying, “Women, nature, and the whole world are against us! Woe is us!” Feminists say the same thing about men, nature, and the whole world. So how is the Red Pill perspective any different from the gynocentric perspective than Red Pillers see as the enemy? It’s just a mirror image of the same thing they’re fighting against. And that makes it a zero sum game. It’s not a workable perspective on the problem. It doesn’t provide a real solution, but only perpetuates a battle of opposing forces that results in stalemate, not progress.

Despite my use of some light satire, the purpose of my articles is not to denigrate Red Pillers in general, and MGTOW in particular. Rather, it is to give a kick to the butt and say, “Quit complaining, quit blaming everyone and everyone else, take responsibility for your own life, and get to work. And by the way, quitting society is not a real solution.” I have no quarrel with those in the movement who are already taking responsibility for their own lives and doing the hard work. But it’s impossible to spend much time in any kind of contact with the Red Pill movement without getting a serious dose of, “My life sucks because of everyone and everything else—especially those damn women.” How is that different from Hillary blaming everyone and everything else for her election loss (those evil Russians, Comey, even the DNC) while claiming to take full responsibility for it? The same inherent contradiction suffuses the Red Pill movement. That’s my main quarrel with it.

But to answer your your question more directly, I certainly would not say “get over it” on Monday of the next week. That would be heartless, and the wrong time to say such a thing. But over time, yes, that would be exactly my message. It happened, and there’s nothing you can do about that. You can’t undo history. And you need to move on with your life. Yes, you’ll still have to deal with the fallout. It’s not going to be easy. Speaking for myself, I’m still dealing with stray fallout to this day, even though ground zero in my life was a decade ago. But you can’t let your past cripple your present and your future. You have to leave it behind and move on with your life.

You also have to pick your battles, and decide what’s worth fighting for, as compared to what you’re fighting about mostly from hurt, anger, and a desire to win and for your ex to lose. I made the decision that my relationship with my children was worth fighting for, but the money was not. And I remain happy with that decision to this day. Once the initial bomb has dropped and the initial rupture is over, being a man means regaining your balance and thinking strategically rather than emotionally, assessing the situation, and determining what, exactly your goals will be going forward, what’s worth expending your energy on, and what you just need to let go of. That is also the counsel I would give over time to a man who has been through the type of devastation I went through.

You may have thought you read all you need to know but you still don’t get it, do you? You think we WANT to do “something meaningful” with our lives. That’s for the sheeple like you who just blindly follow the herd off the cliff. We’re opting out of life completely, working only as much to sustain ourselves and our simple lifestyles. We are no longer willing to contribute to the anti-white, anti-male society that hates us. And you know what? We’re happy! Yes, happy! That may surprise a herd-follower like you but you’re not “going your own way” are you? And no, I don’t blame women at all. I blame the enablers like you who treat them like Queens when they’re nothing but wicked witches of the West. You are like those perpetual morons who hold up those “Refugees Welcome” signs, inviting in the filth of the world to rob, rape and murder us because it makes YOU feel good, consequences be damned. So now these witches prance around thinking that they’re worth more than the contempt they deserve, preying on yet another sad sack chump and ruining his life. I suggest you grow up and grow a pair. Women are not angels and their corrupt morals have been, and will continue to be, the downfall of many a great man.

Your insults are standard MGTOW boilerplate, so I’ll pass them over for now and focus on the substance of your comment. But please do see our comments policy.

As I said in the article, if you want to be single, that’s certainly your choice.

Further, if you want to live subsistence-style, that is also your choice. However, if you work at all, you are still contributing to society in one way or another. Humans as a species are social animals, not loners. It is very difficult to entirely unplug from human society and still survive. If your choice is to contribute only minimally to society, at least you are contributing to society at that minimal level.

Notice, though, that the celebrated scientists, mathematicians, inventors, and philosophers featured on the MGTOW.com History page were not men who withdrew into their shell and contributed as little as possible to human society. They are great men precisely because they made great contributions to the advancement of human science, mathematics, technology, and philosophy, thus raising the level of humanity as a whole. If you choose to live at a subsistence level and contribute as little as possible to a society that you see as corrupt, once again that is your own choice. But in making that choice for yourself and your life you are ensuring that you will never join the ranks of those great men.

You say that you don’t blame women, but then you go on to call them wicked, moronic, morally corrupt witches who are the downfall of many a great man.

No, women are not angels.

Neither are men.

All of us here on earth are in process.

Considering all women to be utterly corrupt and unsalvageable monsters is no more rational than considering all women to be spotlessly pure angelic beings standing high up on pedestals. Here on earth we humans, both men and women, are neither angels nor devils. We all live on a spectrum somewhere in between—some closer to the angelic end of the spectrum, some closer to the demonic end of the spectrum, and most in the vast, mixed middle.

I am truly sorry that you and your fellow MGTOW have had such bad experiences with women. Women can indeed be horribly corrupt, just as men can be. And for those men unfortunate enough to get tangled up with a corrupt woman, the results are often horrifying.

However, just because you and your fellow MGTOW have experienced those particular women, that does not mean every man’s experience with women is the same as yours. It is not rational to ignore the facts and realities of human life. Contrary to AWALT dogma, the fact of the matter is that there are many happily married men who are doing great things and whose wives are supporters of and even equal partners in their great accomplishments. Just because you and your fellow MGTOW got the short end of the stick with women, and have not experienced that reality for yourselves, that does not mean it doesn’t exist.

Your life is in your own hands. You can do with it what you wish. If your experiences with women have been so scarring that you can never consider being with a woman again, I can understand that. Just understand that your experience with women is not every man’s experience with women.

And realize that if you want to be a great man, you have to do great things.

MGTOW.COM is the garbage can of MGTOW. I used to go there for over a year. The infighting. The division of group think and if someone disagrees with you they call you a tradon or something. I got banned from there because I had a huge disagreement. They had the nerve to ask me to apologize to them.
I thought I could trust these people but they ended lying about me. It just shows some of these men don’t even deserve a decent woman because it’s all the women’s fault. Personally I take my responsibility for my choices and I refuse to let some woman trying chop my balls off.
I used to be a nice guy. Not a push over nice guy but treat women with respect but these women feared me.
I remember one woman ended going out with an assholes and then complain about him to me. She didn’t want a relationship with me because she feared getting close again. With an asshole she knows won’t get as close.
Same thing happened with another woman. She used to come to my work and flirt at me for several months. Then she asked me why i never asked her out and I told her I didn’t have her number. I called a few days later and she ended the call very quickly and acted like I was a creep. I saw her a few times cross the street. She wouldn’t even look at me. I found it odd since she was the one who approached me. A year later she comes to me and ask if I wanted to be with her and that was pregnant. Naturally I said no, since treated me so rudely. I was never mad at these women but a lot of men are avoiding decent men because they fear getting close again.
I remember a tourist acting strange. He acted as if a war was going on. He told me that women in the city didn’t respect men at all, treated men rather poorly and suggest go to my homeland (I’m Asian btw) to get married. It was one or two women it was a lot of women.

This is what is going on with women these days no respect for me. It is literally women kicking men in the balls. This is something I will never tolerate from a woman.

In my experience, every movement has its infighting. And in many of them, the faithful spend more time fighting each other than they do working toward their common cause in the wider world. Looking in on the MGTOW movement from the outside, it looks like it’s no exception to that common pattern.

About your experiences with women: People, both men and women, tend naturally to be selfish jerks, even if they’re skilled at covering it over from other people and from themselves with a veneer of civility and concern for others. For most people, it takes a lifetime of conscious effort to grow out of that. And many people just never bother to make the effort. That’s the primary reason why relationships are so hard, and fail so often. For a riff on that theme with a touch of satire, see my article: “How to Attract the Opposite Sex—and Keep ’Em.”

Further, it’s all too easy to blame the opposite sex, but be blind to our own jerkiness that gets in the way of developing good relationships. But complaining about and blaming the opposite sex really doesn’t accomplish anything, because we can’t personally do anything about other people’s shortcomings. Only about our own. So although it’s much harder to take responsibility for our own contributions to bad experiences with the opposite sex, it has the potential to be a lot more effective in finding and creating better relationships for ourselves.

In general, I think men should be men, and not try to accommodate themselves to what everyone else, including women, think they should be. However, that’s not a license to be a prick. It’s a man’s job to be a good man. And that includes not just the traditional male attributes of physical and mental strength, etc., but also honesty, respect for others, personal integrity, and so on. The best way to attract a good woman and avoid all the divas is to be a good man, and stand on your own integrity as a man. Women who are drama queens will quickly dump a man who doesn’t put up with their BS. And that’s a good thing. But women who have a solid character of their own will appreciate a man who has strength of character but isn’t a jerk about it.

And yes, fear of closeness and intimacy is a real thing. The more a woman (or man) opens up, the more vulnerable s/he becomes to being taken advantage of and hurt badly. It takes time and a lot of thoughtfulness on both sides to develop a level of trust that allows for real closeness and openness between two people.

YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!! Thank you so very much, Lee!!!! I stumbled on your article while doing some recon work on the blue pill and I cannot thank you enough for your article on MGTOW and the Red Pill. It was kind of funny, because I read that posting on MGTOW about the person playing Soldier of Fortune II, tutting at his wife at the department store, etc. I found that article several years ago and I loved it!!

Myself, I went MGTOW many years ago and swallowed the red pill. I like your article because you are not, in my opinion, lashing out at men, MGTOW or the Red Pill philosophies. Rather, you are challenging men who already are MGTOW to truly live up to the real meaning of MGTOW and not blame women for all their problems in life. I agree with you wholeheartedly on this. Personal accountability needs to be the refrain of everyone on Earth, but sadly, this is becoming a rare commodity indeed.

Personally, I have gone monk on my MGTOW journey. That has been a difficult decision, but, in companion to this, I also declare the name of Christ in my life and therefore I believe that sexual union should only be practiced in the bonds of marriage, and I understand the restrictions Christ has placed on sexuality and the reason behind those restrictions. I do not like using women just for my sexual pleasure and for no other purpose. Now, some MGTOW’s would disagree with me on this, but with a chosen lifestyle, as you mentioned, comes accountability. If I declare the name of Christ in my life, then I will be held accountable to that name and how I treated creatures that he created in his own image.

I agree with the Psalmist when he says to find a righteous woman is more valuable that rubies! I know some men that have Proverbs 31 women as wives and to be very honest, it kind of makes me jealous in a way! I esteem those women highly as they take after such giants as Hannah, Deborah, Ruth, Hagar, Sarah, Leah, Rachel and above them all is the Mother of our Lord, Mary.

Thank you again, Lee for getting to the heart of MGTOW and what it truly means!

Thanks for stopping by, and for your good thoughts. Yes, my purpose in writing the article is not to attack anyone, but rather to offer a spiritually-based perspective on MGTOW, and to give a kick in the behind to MGTOW who have retreated to their own private island where they’re going nowhere fast and blaming women for their withdrawal from society and their lack of any real goals or accomplishments in life.

That sort of thing I have little respect for. But your view and commitment to what it means for you to be a MGTOW I can respect.

Thank you Lee for your article. I recently discovered Swedenborg. I am a practicing Buddhist but appreciate Christian Mystics as well. It is ironic that Swedenborg never married and may have been MGTOW himself.
Lee, MGTOW is about men feeling valuable within and feeling worthy as human beings. Society gives men messages from love songs and movies that to be complete as a human being you need to have a wife or girlfriend. I realize women get the same messages. MGTOW should not be about hatred of women at all. However some men have had as you had stated have had some horrific experiences with woman and need a safe space to vent. Society has encouraged men to hold in their feelings and be like a macho tough guy. It is not healthy for men to hold it in and many MGTOW men are very hurt. Eventually, as MGTOW men heal as I have don, they begin to take responsibility for themselves and see the pointlessness of blaming women for their problems.
MGTOW is some ways has some similarities to feminism in that feminism has told some women that a woman needs a man like “a fish needs a bicycle”. MGTOW is saying the the same things to men. MGTOW is about men valuing themselves as human beings not contingent on having a female significant other. MGTOW is about men redefining their gender roles as just be strong and don’t feel. MGTOW has allowed men to get in touch with their feelings-it is helpful to feel your emotions at times in a healthy way. Yes I hear what you are saying Lee, the misogyny coming from some MGTOW is excessive and uncalled for. However, these men are hurt and angry. It is better they vent on the internet than hurt themselves or others. Remember most of the angry MGTOW’s are in the beginning stages and raw. Eventually, these men learn how to be independent and happy being single. Healing takes time. In fact MGTOW is sort of like men’s liberation from their societal and gender roles as feminism is for some women. MGTOW has helped men get started on some type of spiritual path. Isn’t it interesting that Swedenborg never married- I am not sure he had girlfriends. But he certainly “went his own way” as an independent thinker and didn’t conform to society’s gender roles. Back then for people to be unmarried-you stood out more than today where it is more common. Lee check out this video

Thanks for stopping by, and for your thoughtful comment. I think there is much truth and reality to what you say. And I do hope these early stage MGTOW will eventually heal from their awful experiences with women and focus more on developing themselves both as men and as human beings.

When Swedenborg was a young man he did make an effort to woo and marry a woman. Unfortunately for him, the object of his affections did not return them. When he realized this, he released her from the written pledge of marriage to him that her father had given him. That experience seems to have taken the wind out of his sails, though there is some indication that he may have made one or two further unsuccessful attempts at courtship before settling into the life of a bachelor. So perhaps he was, in a sense, a MGHOW.

However, unlike today’s garden variety MGHOW, Swedenborg continued to have a great affection for women throughout his life, and clearly longed to be married. So if he did “go his own way,” it was due to his circumstances rather than to his own inclination or choice. And it certainly never involved any rejection of or distaste for women.

Later in life, during his theological period, he wrote an entire highly evocative (and highly controversial) book about marriage. In that book he states that marriage is the ideal God-given state for men and women to be in, and far preferable to celibacy—which he describes as an unfortunate and much less spiritual state.

Some of his personal writings indicate that he believed that a particular highly intelligent woman known to him would be his eternal marriage partner in the spiritual world. However, a relationship with her was impossible in this world because she was already married—to a man ill-suited to her character.

As I say in the above article, it’s entirely a man’s choice whether he wishes to have a relationship with a woman. And if a particular man wants to be single, that is his prerogative. However, I continue to believe that for those who are able and willing, being married is ultimately a more satisfying and more spiritual way of life.

Thank you Lee for your excellent explanation of Swedenborg and his “love life”. I thin your blog is magnificent. I have been involved with mens groups and mens liberation for a while. Your blog needs to be in a book eventually-you have a very authentic, and balanced view on gender relations. I think one of the biggest problems for our society now is the horrific relations between men and women but rarely is it discussed inasmuch as it makes men and women uncomfortable.

I do disagree with one opinion you have. You wrote “However, I continue to believe that for those who are able and willing, being married is ultimately a more satisfying and more spiritual way of life.” This is why MGTOW (without the misogyny) is so needed. Men have gotten messages through love songs, holidays like Valentine’s day.” that to feel complete they need to have a female significant other. I would say that for some men being single can be a more satisfying and spiritual way of life. I think the Apostle Paul mentioned that being single can be superior in some ways than being married. In today’s time where more and more human beings are single more than ever given the nature of our society and gender relations, single men need to be encouraged that they are valuable being single. Single men need to be encouraged that they are complete within themselves. Single men need to be encouraged that being single is not weird, or makes a man an outcast-that in fact their are advantages to a man being single. Single men for example, have more time to do service work for our society and are not limited in any way by having a partner and/or family.

Here is my point Lee. You mentioned Swedenborg writing highly of marriage as superior to being single. I had read that Swedenborg had a view of marriage where a person does not necessarily have to be married to another person. I had read that Swedenborg mentioned you could be married to yourself. is that so?After all although Swedenborg had unrequited love, he still was single his whole life so it would not be unusual for him to say this. What Swedenborg meant by being married to yourself is having a relationship with your inner essence-your inner soul and spirit. So while I agree with you Lee that Swedenborg wrote highly of marriage it did not necessarily mean one has to be coupled. According to Swedenborg you could be married to yourself.

I respect your view as marriage being superior to singlehood for men and you have it appears a very healthy marriage. I just want to say that men choosing to stay single maybe equally as valuable and some men may actually evolve spiritually and emotionally being single than being married. Our culture is fascinated by being couples that it makes single people feel sort of left out or bad. For example, so many songs on pop radio stations are about being in a relationship. Many movies especially romantic ones have a theme of somehow meeting Prince or Princess charming as one’s salvation. But thankfully much Christian pop music has lyrics relating to the love of God and man. I just want to close that I think it is important for single men to value themselves in their singleness and know that if they desire a life without a woman by their side in a marriage or relationship, that their life can be just as happy and fulfilling. Keep up the great blog Lee.

Thanks for continuing the conversation. I do appreciate and enjoy the open-minded and open-hearted spirit in which you write.

And thanks for your kind words about the blog. We recently passed 300 posts, which probably amounts to fifteen or twenty books’ worth of articles. And I do plan to turn some of this material into books in the future, not to mention writing some books from scratch. For now, though, this blog is where I (together with my wife) express and develop my thoughts on matters spiritual and practical.

To respond first to your further thoughts on Swedenborg: I would say that Swedenborg mentioned that we could be married within ourselves rather than married to ourselves. More specifically, Swedenborg said that achieving a marriage of good and truth, or love and wisdom, or head and heart, within ourselves is the whole point of the path of “regeneration” or spiritual rebirth. Until both our head and our heart are fully “partnered” with each other and engaged in whatever work or activities we do to benefit and care for our fellow human beings, we are not fully developed as a spiritual (and thus true) human being.

I cover this idea a little more, together with its relation to interpersonal marriage, in the article, “Marriage in the Resurrection: The Deeper Meaning.” In particular, the sections titled “Becoming married within ourselves” and “Inner marriage is necessary for interpersonal marriage” deal with this subject.

So yes, I do believe, based on my understanding of Swedenborg and my experience of human life, that single people, both men and women, can grow and develop spiritually just as married people can. My preference for the married state does not mean I think single people are left out in the cold, or are somehow lesser human beings. We are all beloved of God, and God has a path forward and upward for all of us, whatever our relationship circumstances might be here on earth. (And honestly, it’s hard to imagine Swedenborg accomplishing what he did if he had been married here on earth.)

I also suspect that many people who do not marry here on earth due to unfortunate experiences or circumstances, but who do the work of achieving that “inner marriage” or “spiritual marriage,” may in the other life find that the barriers to being married here on earth fade away, and find a partner to spend eternity with. However, I also believe there is room in heaven for those who continue to choose a single life.

Yes, Paul said he wished people would remain single as he did. And that has heavily influenced large segments of the Christian Church, which consider celibacy to be a superior and more spiritual state than marriage. However, Paul also expected Christ to return very soon—within his lifetime. His general advice was for the married to stay married and the single to stay single until Christ came, when he thought everything would be reshuffled anyway. Of course, Christ did not come soon—at least, not in the way that Paul and many of the other early Christians expected. And that puts a different light on Paul’s sayings about being single or married.

Back to the earlier subject, I do agree with you that people who buy into the popular cultural message that getting married will fix all your problems, make life instantly wonderful, and cause you to live happily ever after are in for a major letdown and crash if they get married with these pie-in-the-sky ideas running around in their head. The reality is that if you don’t do the hard work of developing yourself as a thoughtful, moral, compassionate, and spiritual person, you will never be able to sustain a good, deep, and happy relationship with another human being, especially within a marriage. Along these lines, see my article: “How to Attract the Opposite Sex—and Keep ‘Em.” (It gets better. I promise! 😀 )

So even if you and I may be standing across the fence from each other on the issue of being single vs. being married, I think we agree that no matter which life we choose, developing our own self, and the “spiritual marriage” within ourselves, is a critical task without which the rest will ultimately not have much meaning or effectiveness.

As is the usual case, the elephant in the room is completely ignored. What is it, you ask? It is the law and the plethora of industries that have grown up around it. In America, it is the Violence Against Women Act and its evil progeny. To quote Charles Dickens, “The purpose of the law is to create business for itself”.

The number of vultures that feed off the carcass of failed relationships is legion. As always, follow the money and it will lead you to the truth. Watch the documentary “Divorce Corp” as your primer to the new (now growing old) reality.

“Divorce Corp” is just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know the VAWA finances a womens shelter in every county in the country? And who do you think staffs them? Do some research on Title IV-D of the Social Security Code. It gives judges financial incentives to award child custody to the lower earning parent (almost always the mother).

And then there is the reintroduction of debtors prison. The marriage contract is the only civil contract that upon disolution can, and will, be criminalized with imprisonment penalities (almost always the man).

The list goes on and on and on. In essence, the legal system now encourages a woman to destroy a man for any whim as they gladly hold him down at the point of a gun to transfer his current wealth and future wealth to the woman and the legal community. Just that simple.

So, no, we MGTOW do not hate women. We understand them. You can love women or you can understand them, but you can’t do both. And yes, their behaviour is genetically based (read up on Dawkins’ Selfish Gene Theory and do a logical extrapolation) . Hating an animal for what it does naturally is stupid. Respecting its power and avoiding it in the wild is wise.

What we do hate and fear is the awesome and destructive power of the state and its gun toting enforcers. Only an absolute fool would expose himself to such punative power. So, no thanks, we’re going our own way. This system cannot last and it cannot be fixed. So we make a drink, kick back, and enjoy the show. Cheers.

As I said in the article, if you want to be single, that’s certainly your choice. But others of us make a different choice, and we don’t necessarily get destroyed by that choice, as so many MGTOW seem to have been in the past.

Are there bad laws on the books that need to be amended or repealed altogether? Yes. Legions of them. I’m no friend of the metastasizing power of the state. And I’m in support of those groups whose purpose is to repeal or amend various bad laws.

However, there are bad laws everywhere on earth. Pending the reform or the collapse of the various governments, we still have to live with them. And except in highly corrupt countries, it is possible to live a reasonably self-directed and workable life.

That includes men who wish to be in a relationship with or married to a woman. As I also said in the article, I speak from experience. I’ve been through the divorce mill. And I didn’t go to debtor’s prison, nor did I have my life destroyed. Sure, it was no fun, and it knocked me down for a while. But although the divorce was not my choice, I was able to achieve my primary goals in the terms of the divorce, which were to remain an active father to my children and to sever all financial ties with my ex-wife. Not every man gets fleeced in the divorce court, and not every woman sucks the man dry. A decade later, I have a very good life, and my ex-wife is merely a past memory for me.

Further, the “selfish gene” doesn’t apply only to women. It applies to men as well. We all start out selfish, men and women alike. And many of us never grow out of it. The Violence Against Women Act does deal with a particular type of harm that the selfishness of men inflicts upon women, even if in the opinion of the Red Pill community, it goes too far in dealing with that selfishness. But the fact of the matter is that many men do perpetrate violence on their wives and girlfriends. And one of the proper purposes of the state is to protect people from violence perpetrated by other people. As long as men perpetrate violence against women, the state is going to intervene—and properly so.

It does no good for the Red Pill movement to ignore this reality, and attempt to paint women as the evil aggressors and men as the innocent victims. That’s the same thing that the more radical end of feminism does, only the other way around. And neither one of them is a realistic or balanced picture of men, women, and the relationships between them.

The Red Pill movement would do well to take domestic violence seriously, and to work toward stopping the violence that many men perpetrate against women. If it did so, then it might have a greater voice in reforming VAWA, because people not in the movement would have more respect for the Red Pill movement, rather than viewing it as yet one more unbalanced movement based on a wild conspiracy theory.

Are some women blood-sucking gold-diggers? Yes, of course. Are all women blood-sucking gold-diggers? No. The reality of hundreds of millions of happily married men who remain happily married for the rest of their lives demonstrates that the AWALT dogma of the Red Pill movement is simply false.

But if you choose to believe that dogma, you will see nothing else, because you’ll see everything through its filter, meaning you will simply not see the fact that many women do not conform to your particular conspiracy theory about women.

So if you’ve had a bad experience with the wrong woman, and want to remain single, that’s certainly your choice. But there’s a much bigger world out there, and it’s filled with all kinds of different people. Including women who are good, loving, thoughtful, intelligent, and decent people.

Lee, I will only address a few of your counter arguements. First, I will address your defense of VAWA.

On its surface VAWA appears to be a shield of protection enacted with the best of intentions. But as the saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. It has morphed into a sword of agression. Or was that its intended purpose all along? Evident says that it was intented to be a weapon from the get go. It is based upon the Duluth Model whose authors openly admit was written, enacted, and enforced to be anti-male. Look it up.

While looking up the truth about the Duluth Model, also look up Lisa Scott Law. She is a family law attorney in Tacoma. She describes the issuance of restraining orders as so commonly used as the opening salvo in a divorce it has become a “sport”. A TRO not only ejects a man from his home, it has the effect of placing him in a legal straight jacket from which there is no escape. TRO’s are given out like Halloween candy. What judge in his right mind is going to deny one? Answer, none. Been there, done that.

The man’s legal right to his property is denied without due process as the TRO process is ex parte. He has no chance to defend himself before gun toting enforcers forcibly remove him from his home. This is clearly unconstitutional but still has been blessed by SCOTUS.

The unconstitutionality of this legal abomination gets worse. The Lautenburg Amendment denies a man possession of firearms or ammunition if there is a restraining order against him. He has committed no crime but is yet again denied his property without due process and a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment. And yet again, SCOTUS has blessed this slap in the face of the Founding Fathers and Constitution.

I could go on and on about how the so-called justice system is so heavily stacked against a man in a legal contest with a woman. The ethos is “man bad, woman good”. And lets not forget the aforementioned financial incentives to crucify the man. For a man, the carving above the courthouse door should quote from Dante’s Inferno; “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”. The process is a passion play where everyone in the courtroom knows the predetermined outcome except the poor schmuck who is the object of the exercise. Been there, done that.

Second, I will address the AWALT versus NAWALT argument in a legal context. Your experince in court was determined solely by your ex. Either she did not possess the vindictive streak so many women have or you didn’t have enough assets to make it worth her and her slime ball attorney’s time to go after. That would make her a NAWALT not by her alturistic nature but by the high degree of rational self-interest all women possess in spades.

To close my counter arguement with the facts and the truth: Are all women like that? No, but enough of them are to make the risk far out weigh the reward.

Lastly, you are obviously what we call a blue pill tradcon. And there is no chance of having you change your beliefs. You may or may not reply to this post but if you do I request a favor. Do your own research on the links I have given you and then try a logical fact based arguement to me, not blue pill tradcon dogma myths that no longer apply.

BTW, MGTOW saves lives. It pulled the pistol out of my mouth and I am sure countless others. For that reason alone you should be supportive of us. Cheers.

My argument really isn’t about the VAWA. You may be right. It may be a travesty that should be repealed.

Rather, my argument is that there are always bad laws, and we have to either get them changed or learn to live with them. Mostly the latter, because bad laws are rarely repealed. Laws—even “temporary” ones—tend to live forever, until the nation making them collapses under its own weight. And then the process starts all over again. This cycle has been happening for thousands of years, ever since humans first began to organize themselves into kingdoms and nations.

Further, my argument is that violence against women, perpetrated by men, is a real thing, and should be taken just as seriously by the Red Pill movement as it is by the feminist opposition. The Red Pill movement would then be in a much better position to have a seat at the table in influencing the direction of future legislation. Opposing everything intended to deal with domestic violence just isn’t a viable position to take. Taking domestic violence seriously would also be men taking responsibility for the wrongs of men, and not just blaming everything on women. When men are bad, Red Pill men should recognize that.

In other words, “woman bad, man good” is not a viable alternative to “man bad, woman good.” Sometimes women are bad, sometimes men are bad. Sometimes men are good, sometimes women are good. As long as the Red Pill movement sees women (and feminism) as the enemy, and as generally or wholly evil, it will continue to be engaged in a losing battle. It will be philosophically no better than the feminist opposition, except that it won’t have the power that the feminist opposition currently has politically and socially. And it will gain no traction with the wider society, which just isn’t going to buy its “man good, woman bad” philosophy.

I’m glad MGTOW saved your life. I don’t oppose MGTOW as such. Rather, I critique it from a position of greater objectivity, having experienced both the bad and the good of both women and men. Besides my personal experiences with marriage and divorce, I used to be a pastor. I was privy to many domestic situations. Sometimes the man was the bad guy and the woman was the good guy. Sometimes the woman was the bad guy and the man was the good guy. Sometimes they were both good guys, but just had some practical and relationship issues. And sometimes they were both bad guys. The AWALT dogma is wrong because it sees only what it wants to see, and not the complex reality of men, women, and their widely varying characters and relationships as they actually exist out there in the real world.

I have done funerals for both men and women who lived in long, happy marriages, sometimes lasting 60+ years, and who were good, solid, contributing members of the community. I have seen how the husband and wife loved and supported each other through those years, to the point where, as the Bible says, they were no longer two, but one. My own parents were an example. And having seen that, no, it won’t be possible for you to convince me that your anti-woman dogma is the “rational” and “realistic” view of women, men, and their relationships. I know from experience that there are many very good women who simply don’t conform to your AWALT dogma.

I understand that MGTOW generally are MGTOW because they were on the wrong side of the gender complexity that exists in society, and got tangled up with the wrong women. But that doesn’t make the whole world that way, and it doesn’t make all women that way. If you’ve been burned too badly to ever engage with women again, I can understand and respect that. But not every man has your terrible experience with women. Generalizing from your experience with women, together with the experience with women of your fellow MGTOW, to draw the conclusion that that’s how all, or even most, women are is not objective or rational. And aren’t men supposed to be better than women at being objective and rational?

As for my being “obviously a blue pill tradcon,” that’s just standard Red Pill name-calling. And in my case, it’s not only wrong, but ridiculously wrong.

I believe in freedom and self-determination for both men and women. I don’t think men should rule over women, nor do I think women should rule over men. I’m opposed to both traditional feminist values and to what has now become traditional men’s rights movement values. Both, in my view, are unbalanced reactions and pendulum swings to real and longstanding gender problems. But neither has a very good answer to those problems, because neither takes a balanced view of men and women.

We are in a time of massive cultural and spiritual change. Changing gender roles are a key part of that change. I don’t advocate going back to the old, traditional roles, as a tradcon would. Rather, I advocate leaving both men and women free to determine their own roles, believing that the inherent differences between men and women will, in time, given freedom, settle down into a new and better pattern of gender relations than we have ever had in recorded human history.

As an Australian MGTOW I’d like to make a few points: There are different levels of MGTOW and factions within the movement. I’ve been married before, had GF’s, but now I am not interested in any serious relationship with a woman, I have been MGTOW for two and a half years now. I had been a MGTOW for a while without realizing it.

Basically, I just live for myself. spend all my money mostly on myself. I’m nearly 50 and reasonably financially secure.I only work part-time. I like to buy gold and silver and expensive watches, go to the beach, go fishing sometimes, go to coffee shops,pat my dog, check out a movie sometimes. I find I don’t need women at all really apart from sex sometimes. I have always given some money to certain charities and still do.

I am a regular visitor to Pattaya, I love the place, not just for the sex. My ex-wife is Asian, all my GF’s have been Asian ( I’m white ) I am just living a fairly simple life now, no stress.

There are some men in MGTOW and the MRM ( Men’s Right’s Movement ) who really do hate women, I’ll admit that. Whilst not being a hater I’ll say though that nearly all relationships between men and women ( nowadays ) are based on expediency: Getting seriously involved with a woman is generally a waste of time, money, and resources. Women are hypergamous, that means their main goal and drive is to obtain money/resources or some sort of gain from men. A lot of blue pill men fail to understand this, or they are are just stupid beta male cucks who don’t care .Many MGTOW have talked about this on You Tube.

I will even admit that some women are ok, but finding them is the proverbial needle in a haystack thing. Just have ONS, be a PUA. or use hookers. It is the best way.

As for that guy you talked about who likes to stay at home, sleep, and eat pizza, play video games and have a BBQ or “cook out” or “fry up” as you say in USA, who is to say he is loser? If he is happy and content and doing what he wants he is a winner. Not my sort of thing his lifestyle, but each to their own.

Why should anyone “contribute” to “mainstream society”, or worse still, get married? Marriage is just the road to devastation, slavery, and ruin. I encourage all young men not to marry and have kids. Do not waste your life on a marriage!

Once again, if you want to be single, that’s certainly your choice. Nobody should be pressured or guilted into marriage when they aren’t crazy about the idea. Whatever else it is, and for all its joys and satisfactions, marriage is also a lot of hard personal work. Doing that work has to be freely chosen by the people involved.

It sounds like you haven’t been totally swallowed up by the Red Pill echo chamber. AWALT starts to sound true when everyone around you is loudly shouting it in a camp-revival-like atmosphere.

The reality is that pretty much all of us, men and women alike, start out in adult life fairly immature and self-absorbed in one way or another. It’s just that women tend to be immature and self-absorbed in different ways than men do. And for men, their own form of immature and self-absorbed looks okay (because they’re embedded in it, and therefore have no perspective on it), whereas women’s way of being immature and self-absorbed looks terrible and inexcusable (because they’re seeing it from the outside). For women, it’s exactly the same, except in the other direction.

The reality is that it takes time, intention, and a lot of hard work for anyone, man or woman, to grow up and become a thoughtful and mature human being. Unfortunately, by that time a lot of people have gotten burned in their relationships with the opposite sex, and have gone sour on the opposite sex. Hence all the AWALT males and man-hating females.

But not all of ’em. Some of ’em grow up and get a better perspective on themselves and the other sex. Some are able to get over it and form actual healthy relationships with the other sex. And for those who can do this, it is a very happy and fulfilling thing. Whether you ever decide to do that in the future is, of course, 100% your choice. But since you at least do understand that NAWALT, I would suggest not entirely closing the door on a future relationship, even if it may be a decade or more down the road. It’s your own choice, but I would suggest keeping your options open.

As far as living for oneself, that, also, is people’s own choice. But it’s rather a small, circumscribed life. We humans are a social species, not a loner species. Even if you don’t believe in the greater good and that sort of thing, being engaged in the wider social scene and building strong interpersonal relationships is just part of our genetic and social character as homo sapiens. Attempting to cut off all relationships that have any depth goes against our very nature.

Having said that, if you regularly contribute to charity, then you’re not actually living entirely for yourself. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing. Contributing to something greater than oneself gives a satisfaction that goes beyond just taking care of one’s own animal and emotional needs, as important as that is to our overall wellbeing.

I would say that Ive taken the “Red Pill” but that largely means that I’m aware of societal traps for the modern male. This is what it means was to me…

1) I’ll never be legally married again. I may declare in front of all my friends and family to stay w my partner (commitment ceremony)but will never delve into an undeniably skewed legal system which favors women at every turn. We can derive some sort of contract for property division (ie an escape clause) but I refuse to sign and contract which isn’t fair, marriage or otherwise.

2) Women demand equality, I demand equality. Thanks to the red pill I’m fully aware of the current double standard. Women want equality as long as men die in wars for them, police the streets in much higher numbers, work much more dangerous jobs, are largely expected to pay for dates, etc

3) I will have a custody agreement in place prior to having children. Child custody laws favor women period. I get my kids 11 days a month and I had to spend 18 months in court and over 10k to do that. I’ll just add that I have zero history of abuse and no criminal record. The unequal balance was due to my irregular work schedule ie I work more than ever to pay $1300/month child support. So my advice to guys, just expect to not see your kids a lot if you aren’t subservient to your partner.

In conclusion, I have moved on from bitterness and now focus on practical methods to live well. Why, I LEARNED FROM MY MISTAKES! I still love women,but will never give a woman a key to my financial kingdom. I’ll fully expect her to pull her own weight and practice equality. So until I meet that woman, I have a great job, a lovely relationship w my girls, vacation well w my bros and lady friends, and just live life. Yes, I’m guarded, it’s not ideal but I’m stable and my mental health has never been better. C’est la vis…

Thanks for stopping by and telling your story. I’m glad your bad experience with divorce didn’t totally sour you on women, as seems to be the case with so many MGTOW.

Personally, I don’t think the State should have anything to do with marriage. However, despite the negative aspects of getting the law all tangled up in people’s personal relationships and finances, there are some benefits of legal marriage that are useful as long as we live in a society focused on money and property—which will likely be a very long time. Most couples would also prefer their partner to have the right to visit them in the hospital and make medical decisions for them if necessary rather than that defaulting to some possibly estranged or hostile biological family member. Still, I believe that securing specific legal rights should be a separate thing from making a personal or religious commitment recognized socially and religiously as marriage. In this as in other matters, I believe in a separation of Church and State. For an interesting sidelight on this, see my post:Real Marriage vs. Legal Marriage

My own experience with divorce, while not pleasant, was nowhere near as hellish and biased as what many men have recounted on the MGTOW websites. I was able to gain effective 50% physical custody of my two children who were still minors (my two sons). Under the laws of the state of Massachusetts where I then resided, this meant there would be no child support flowing either way. There was also no alimony. For his last two years of high school my youngest son lived full-time with me and my wife by his own choice (I had since remarried). While I could have pursued child support from my ex-wife during that time, I never did. Besides my lack of interest in getting my family all tangled up in the courts again, one of my primary goals in the original divorce settlement was to have no remaining financial entanglements with my ex-wife after the divorce. Yes, that meant I got stuck with all of the marital debt, which sucked. But severing all financial ties avoided many future conflicts and headaches, and it was well worth it. So although I know many men get screwed by the courts and effectively lose their children, my experience was different. And that was with a female judge presiding. All women are not irrational and evil, MGTOW dogma to the contrary notwithstanding. 😉

For me of that is all now well in the past, thankfully. I’ve had no contact with my ex-wife for many years now, and I have a good relationship with all three of my adult children. So life is good. Not all divorces end as disasters for the man.

Finally in response to your thoughts and resolutions, I have come to believe through these various experiences that ultimately, full equality between men and women, especially in marriage, is the ideal. And this means not just legal and social equality, but also financial equality. I.e., women will no longer be able to simply expect men to support them as if it were their God-given right. While many traditionalists and religious folks bemoan the breakdown of the old pattern of marriage in which the man was the boss and breadwinner and the woman was his servant and homemaker, I say to that old system: Good riddance! If some couples want to engage in a division of labor for the purposes of raising children in which the man works while the woman raises the children, that’s certainly their choice. But it should be a choice made between the two of them, not something that is simply expected by society or by the woman. And if some couples want to reverse the traditional roles such that the woman works and the man raises the children, that, too, is their business, not mine or society’s or the State’s.

Meanwhile, best of luck in finding the woman you’re hoping for, and good on you for not waiting until then to live your life!

A MGTOW blogger whose screen name is Neroke recently wrote a response to the above article here. Though he invited me to respond in his comments (“You have a problem with me you take it to my comments”), when I did so my comment was promptly deleted.

Here is the response I wrote there:

Hi Neroke,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my MGTOW article. I’ll ignore all the standard Red Pill name-calling and personal attacks and focus on a few of the substantive points you make.

But first, I’m a little surprised that you think my article is so terrible. I read a whole lot worse while doing the research for my three-article series on the Red Pill movement. Having gone through a milder version of what a lot of Red Pill men have gone through in their relationships with women, I’m far more sympathetic to MGTOW than most outside critics. And if you can’t take a little satire . . . well, that’s your problem, not mine.

But what really struck me in reading your article is that for the most part, you’re telling MGTOW the same things I am, except from an insider’s perspective rather than from an outsider’s perspective: Get yourself out of bad relationships if you can. Be single if you want to be single. Don’t blame it all on women. Take responsibility for your own self as a man and move on with your life.

As for all of the things you say I’m avoiding, I had already dealt with most of them in the first two articles in my Red Pill series, on MRA and PUA.

Within a few short centuries after Jesus, Christianity got seriously off track, thinking it’s all about believing the right thing rather than about living a good life—which is what the Bible focuses on. Yes, there are statements in the Bible about believing in Jesus. But traditional Christianity has totally ignored what Jesus himself taught. Read Jesus’ own clearest statement about who goes to eternal life and who doesn’t in Matthew 25:31–46 (The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, AKA The Judgment of the Nations). There’s not a word in it about belief or about faith in Jesus. It’s all about how people treat their fellow human beings. And it applies to people of all nations, not just to Christians.

It’s because I’m a Christian that I care far more about how people live than about what they believe. I wrote a whole article on my blog about how atheists can go to heaven just as easily as theists as long as they live a good life with some care and concern for their fellow human beings according to a decent set of principles.

So I don’t really care much if you’re an atheist. I care about whether you live a decent life according to some set of principles that says, at the most basic, that you should treat other people the way you would want to be treated. Even if you don’t believe in God and an afterlife, that still makes life better both for yourself and for humanity as a species.

Of course, it’s your business, not mine, how you choose to run your life. You’re the one who has to take the consequences for whatever choices you make, and whatever actions you take. And no, I’m not talking about being roasted over a spit in hell. I don’t believe that either. I’m talking about making your life a lot harder than it needs to be if you do stupid, selfish, and greedy things.

But you seem to be a decent person despite all the bluster. I suspect you have all of that fairly well under control by now.

Which leads to:

“We’re just venting”

I get that. And I do deal with it in the articles.

But reading the Red Pill and MGTOW forums, it was hard to find the “adult” Red Pillers in the room. Where are the men saying, “Don’t get mad at all women. Get mad at the one who screwed you over”? Where are the men saying, “Let it all out! And then get over it and move on”?

Yes, you can find these things if you dig into some of the MGTOW websites and video channels. But you can find a whole lot more about how terrible, selfish, and destructive women are, and how men’s problems today are due to the feminism and gynocentrism that have taken over modern society.

Bullshit.

But that’s the next point.

To finish up with this one: If you’re going to do your group therapy for new Red Pillers in public, and the adults seem to have left the room and buried their more mature perspectives where most casual observers of the movement never find them, what do you expect your movement to look like to outsiders?

And you can say all you want that you don’t care about what outsiders think of you. But if you want to bring about change in society, it isn’t going to work very well to project an image of screaming victimhood. The people who might otherwise work with you to make those changes will just distance themselves from you and tune you out.

“Today’s society is anti-male”

First of all, objectively, this just isn’t true. Men still occupy most of the top positions in government, industry, and society. Men still make far more money and wield far more power than women do. We are very far from a society in which women rule and men grovel at their feet.

When outsiders hear Red Pillers yell about how women are running the world and oppressing men, it makes the Red Pill movement look ridiculous, because looking at the big picture, it’s simply not true.

However, there certainly has been a pendulum swing on the gender front in recent decades.

Given that throughout recorded history men have been ascendant over women, that’s not too surprising. If anything, the current pendulum swing against all that history of men being on top and women being on the bottom is rather mild.

And as always, the pendulum will continue to swing until society reaches a new equilibrium on gender roles and relations.

I predict that in another fifty or sixty years today’s sitcoms in which men are bumbling idiots and women are smart, savvy achievers will look like dated period pieces just as TV shows from the 1950s now look like dated period pieces. And more seriously, the current imbalances in the divorce courts will be a thing of the past as well. It takes time and a lot of very hard work to correct the wrongs and the overreactions of society and the legal system.

Meanwhile, men in today’s society can still live a good life. Yes, some men will get screwed over by women. And some women will get screwed over by men. Lots of people screw over lots of other people. Welcome to reality.

Personally, about all I have left from my first three decades of adulthood is my beliefs, my relationship with my adult children, and my rather extensive personal library. Most of the rest is gone. I had to rebuild my life from scratch. So don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

It may surprise you to hear that all your shouting aside, I agree with most of what you say in your “rebuttal” to my article. I’m just a little mystified that you seem to think I’ve made a terrible attack on MGTOW. In fact, even though I engaged in some satire along the way, I’m basically telling MGTOW the same thing you’re telling them: Don’t blame women. Take responsibility for your own life.

Well done. My question is I constantly hear from mgtow that we “live in gynocentric society”

They tend to generalize like crazy, so it’s difficult to get a clear handle of what they mean exactly. Is it true?

I’ve been married for over 20 years — it’s means something. To me at least.

But after stumbling/watching mgtow videos, all the input about the “modern” hypergamous women I don’t see them quite as innocent as I used too. Don’t get me wrong, I know there’s crazy women out there, but I always thought they were the minority. At least in my own experience. Heck, my friend, is even thinking about calling off his engagement of a few weeks after watching mgtow videos.

The messages Making him believe he’s good only as long as he’s producing, etc. (and sadly.. some of it, at least to some extent is true. The “love” of the wife dwindles or becomes distant not long after the man gets injured, or losses his means of income) Plus women initiate divorce 65-90% of the time, which Is certainly eye raising.

So.. I’m at a point to where I’m not sure what to teach my son about relationships.

Many seems awfully negative about marriage too. From what I understand the marriage rates are declining. But at the same time, there’s a part of me that would hate to shoot that part in him down, as that could be such a special part in a mans life. I also don’t want to give him a negative connotation towards women and relationships either.

Especially being the relationship with my wife has meant much to me, I can’t imagine what life would be like without a meaningful relationship, (or at least the “option” of it) .. but I am a bit concerned.

Next, mgtow seems to blame feminism for the ‘change’ in women. Especially over the last 10 years. (Yet, most of the women I know hardly know what feminism is past basic equal right for women lol)

Anyhow, do you think mgtow has a point? Are the woman of today totally different? Do they take men for granted for providers? Some of them may not be blatant “gold diggers”, but if the majority of women today are using money (instead of love) as fuel to the relationships, I’d rather have him pass.

Personally, I get the sense of bitterness and irrational thinking from the men of mgtow. Their going thier own way, but yet stay to mock husbands, and fathers. Some things many of them say are just revolting. I was raised to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and trying to see the good, but hey, maybe they have a point I’m somehow missing. Maybe times have changed. Maybe feminism along with tinder and social media has changed things up so drastically, that it is asking to hit the lottery with a decent women, unless you have piles of money.

Again, I have no idea what to teach my kids when it comes to relationships anymore. It seems that so few have morals, values, especially towards relationships and marriage these days. So any input would be appreciated.

First, let me ask you a question: Does your own wife of twenty years fit the profile of the MGTOW woman? Do your other women friends, acquaintances, and coworkers fit the profile of the MGTOW woman? What is your experience of women?

In general, MGTOW are MGTOW because they’ve had one or more bad experiences with women. And don’t get me wrong. There are self-centered, gold-digging women out there. But does the fact that a certain relatively small segment of the male population has had such horrendous experiences with women, and now they’re getting together and talking about it, mean that all women are self-centered, gold-digging prostitutes?

I don’t think so.

MGTOW represents a self-selected group of men who have had such bad experiences with women that they’ve become sour on women as a whole. Men who have wonderful, or even so-so, marriages with great, or at least decent, women don’t go to MGTOW forums to say how terrible women are, nor do they make YouTube videos blaming all of the world’s problems on those terrible, terrible feminists. The vast bulk of the male population of the world are not MGTOW. And the vast bulk of the female population of the world are not self-centered gold-digging bitches.

Now consider whether, if you were a woman, you would want to be with some of the men whose MGTOW videos you’ve watched, and whose MGTOW blog posts you’ve read. Does a decent, well-centered man who has a bad experience with a woman turn around and spend his life making vitriolic statements about women and hurling insults at any man who has anything to do with them?

I don’t think so.

I’ve had conversations with a few thoughtful, reasonable MGTOW. But most of the ones I’ve encountered are so busy screaming at women and blaming feminists for all their problems that you can’t even have a rational conversation with them. Do you think that such men have a sound, balanced view of women, or of life in general?

I don’t.

The reality is, as I say in this series of articles about the Red Pill, that we all, men and women alike, start out in our adult life somewhat self-absorbed and stupid. It takes time, years, and experience to mature emotionally into a really good, decent, thoughtful person. Do women do stupid, selfish, hurtful things to men? They certainly do. Do men do stupid, selfish, hurtful things to women? Yes indeed. We all have, and we all still do sometimes.

But women also do wonderful, thoughtful, selfless things for men. And men also do wonderful, thoughtful, selfless things for women. We’re a mixed bag, we humans. It takes time and effort to set aside the worse parts of our character and to strengthen the better parts of our character.

Some women, and some men, never choose to do that, and never put in the time and effort to become decent people. And for those who have the bad fortune to get tangled up with such a person in a marital or sexual relationship, it certainly can be hell on earth. But in that case, the thing to do is to extricate yourself from that relationship whenever you can, dust yourself off, learn from the experience, and move on just a little bit wiser.

Don’t be afraid to teach your son about love and marriage. Give him the benefit of your own experience with women, relationships, and marriage. Teach him what love and marriage are all about—not about getting pleasure for yourself, but about giving love and joy to another person, and feeling the joy that comes when it is mutual. There is nothing greater in this world than a good, healthy, loving marriage relationship. It’s hard to achieve, but if both partners are committed to it, and work on it every day, the joys and satisfactions it brings are unmatched by anything else we humans do.

Here are a few articles that cover some of the basics of love and marriage. The second and third articles are addressed more specifically to men:

Yes, it’s good for young men to be smart about their relationships and do their best to make sure they don’t get hooked up with a selfish woman who will suck a man dry and spit him out. But those women are indeed in the minority. Most women are just doing their best to live their lives. Some are just ordinary women, and some are really exceptional women. The best way for a man to get a good woman is to be a good man.

As for feminism taking over the world . . . well, it hasn’t happened yet. And considering that men have run the world for thousands of years now, even if the pendulum did swing a little too far the other way for a while, it would just be part of humanity rebalancing itself as we move into a new and more equal era in human social and spiritual evolution.

Personally, I don’t have any fear that women becoming stronger will make men weaker. If anything, it’s a challenge to us men to stand up and reach our own full potential as men. A man who is secure in his own identity and in his own principles and purpose in life has nothing to fear from women throwing off their old traditional shackles and reaching their full potential as women and as human beings.

If anything, being married to a strong, self-assured woman who can be a full partner with her husband is much more exciting, invigorating, and satisfying than having a traditional meek, submissive wife who is more like a dependent or a servant than a partner.

I was that ‘bad boy’ before I was married, so I’ve lived on both sides of the track. With this experience, I tried to speak to mgtow men to let them know that a meaningful relationship is more than possible (at least to ‘consider’ at some point) But as you noted, (outside of a very select few) it’s very difficult to have a sensible conversation with them.

I delved deeper into mgtow being that I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing. In fact, one of the very first videos I saw I thought he (sandman) was joking. while certain points about men respecting themselves, etc were agreeable..

The overall feel of it, the way they spoke about women and relationships just didn’t seem normal or true for that matter. Some of it could easily be taken out of context, I e “don’t make a women the center of your life” uh.. well, when you truly love someone, that sort of what happens, and visa versa, but that also doesn’t mean I can’t focus on goals, myself, as well. I noticed in the comment sections many of the critiques and attempts at other viewpoints were being deleted too.

I also couldn’t help but to think what if a normal innocent man was say looking for dating advice, stumbled into any of that.. Geez. They also talk about “red pill rage”, and I’m thinking to myself what could be so bad to cause a “thing” like that. Nothing good should be causing anger and rage.

They talk about spreading these messages.. even teaching it to little kids, and I’m sorry but those videos, forums, mgtow community, etc are not the definition of empowerment for men. A man can focus on himself, respect himself, without mgtow, or metaphorical “pills” He can and should be open to the possibility relationship if it comes his way. I never understood why they viewed relationships as some sort of a “burden”, in fact going at it alone through life is not easy ir fun as it seems either.

Its good that blogs like yours help to comb through and buffer some of this to offer men a much more balanced perspective.

Last thing men need is to be pushed/steered/shamed toward being a loner, and this simply is NOT natural in any sense of the word for majority of men. They make this odd assumption that being in any kind of relationship (or married) automatically equates to being a door mat or unhappy- when the exact opposite is the case for millions of couples who are blessed, grateful, and couldn’t imagine life without each other.

I asked about feminist, etc. because there seems to be such a hate towards them. At least the 3rd wave. Not just with mgtow, but others, even women, saying it’s destroying marriages, and relationships as a whole.

If anything, the main thing I see effecting relationships are both men and women,

and…

smart phones.

And the abuse of social media on those smart phones lol But that’s for a different topic.

1. I had the same reaction in reading the account that I partially quoted above under the heading, “The fully realized MGHOW.” I could hardly believe that this guy was even taking himself seriously. I thought maybe he actually was just joking. But people get off on major mental tangents. Often they have no perspective at all on their own life and their own opinions. People can believe the most crazy, insane things in the world, and think that it is perfectly normal, and that everyone who disagrees with them is crazy and insane.

Still, that’s why it’s good to check your own experience against that of other people. A lot of the MGTOW stuff may be nuts, but it gets a guy thinking about what he himself thinks, believes, and accepts about women, men, and the relationships between them. We see the light more clearly when it’s in contrast with the darkness. Hearing people spout crazy stuff about women, and then comparing it to our own experience with women, helps us to be more confident in our own conclusions about women and men.

So although I disagree almost entirely with the MGTOW perspective on women, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for it to be out there.

2. It’s also good to keep in mind, as a more seasoned MGTOW said here in the comments, that many of these men have been burned fairly recently, and are just venting. I suspect that if you talked to some of them in a decade’s time, they would have calmed down, gotten over it, and moved on—and probably gotten married again.

3. If they don’t get over it and move on, and if they still think that women are the Devil incarnate, then it’s best that they stay single anyway. ‘Nuff said.

4. I actually agree that it’s best not to put a woman (or a man) at the center of your life. That’s where God is supposed to be. One’s husband or wife is, ideally, the next closest relationship.

By that I don’t mean that we’re all meant to be super chummy with God. Rather, I mean that we should always be focused on living according to God’s commandments and example and values first and foremost. If our husband or wife is urging us to do something that’s not right (it happens!) then our first loyalty is to God and to what’s good and true and right. Living with this kind of integrity is, I believe, the only way to have a really good and healthy marriage.

A more secular way of saying this is that husbands and wives should live according to a code of right principles and right behavior, putting that before spouse, family, and friends. For men in particular, this ensures that no woman will appeal to his ego or his emotions and pull him and his life off track. Of course, the same thing applies to women as well.

Far from damaging a relationship, this commitment to God, or to truth and principle, is attractive to any partner who is a person of truth and good character. And that’s the sort of person we want to be married to, isn’t it?

5. About feminism, we’re in the midst of a major upheaval and paradigm shift in human society. Many patterns that have been fairly stable for thousands of years are now breaking down, and new patterns and relationships are emerging in their stead.

Every time there is any major shift in society, there is always a certain amount of chaos in the transition. To traditionalists and the old guard, it looks like the whole world is falling apart. And in fact, their world is falling apart. (See: “The Evangelicals are Right: The World IS Coming to an End!”) But what’s really happening is that a “new world” is taking the place of the “old world,” and there is a lot of messiness in the transition.

For thousands of years, it has been taken for granted that men are meant to run the show, and women are meant to be submissive to them; that men are to be dominant, and women recessive; that man’s intellect is superior, and woman’s emotion is inferior; and of course that God is a man.

Now all of these societal certitudes are coming under fire, and are breaking down. The feminist movement is on the forefront of breaking down those old social patterns and gender relationships.

Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. I think that God originally created man and woman to be equal. (See: “Man, Woman, and the Two Creation Stories of Genesis.”) However, for men (and women) who still mentally live in and look to the old paradigm, the breakdown of the old male dominance looks like the end of men and the end of marriage. Hence all the lamentations over the “breakdown of marriage,” and in Red Pill dogma, the new “gynocentrism” of society.

In my view, what’s really happening is a fundamental change in the relationship between men and women from a relationship of inequality, dominance, and subservience to a relationship of equal partners. And though it took me a few decades to wrap my head around it, I’ve become more and more convinced that this is a very good thing.

I don’t agree with all of the positions put forward by various feminists and feminist organizations. Some of them are beyond the pale. All men are not rapists. All men are not evil and the enemy. But what I do agree with is that ultimately, God made man and woman to be equal partners with one another. And though in the transition to achieving this there has been a lot of social chaos and carnage, I believe that once we’ve successfully made that transition, both society in general and marriage in particular will be a whole order of magnitude better than it ever was under the old system of gender inequality.

In the end, I do think they have ‘some’ valid points, as mentioned above, and this one:

When a woman stands up and proudly says “I don’t need or want a man”, the audience applauds and treats her like a hero. If a man stands up says the same thing, the audience get hostile, attacks him, and treats him like a freak.

….but it’s the way those points are presented overall is what’s killing them. Hopefully, one day men and women will take the time to truly understand and respect each other. It’s hard for me to imagine a life of selfish people, who mock, love, god, and treat marriage as if it’s nothing more but a meaningless social construct.

The pendulum swings one way and it swings the other. Men used to rule the roost, and women were supposed to shut up and listen. That faulty pattern is now breaking down. While it’s happening, yes, there is some backlash against men. But that’s to be expected. It will all even out in time.

In general, people who live thoughtful and considerate lives will not be attacked and vilified. Yes, there are certainly exceptions. Anyone who bravely stands up against the tide when the tide is going in the wrong direction is going to get hammered. But a virtuous woman or man today will, under ordinary circumstances, get just as much respect as they ever did, and probably more.

And as for the mockers and the scornful, they are digging their own graves.

There is also one thing that stumped me. I read that when after woman has 3-5 sexual partners that it changes her brain, which (supposedly) according to scientic studies makes it very difficult for her to remain loyal, or a viable mate for marriage. I’m no expert researcher, so I’m not sure if this is accurate?

“once a woman has been sexual with 3-5 men (depending on the woman), her brain neurology is re-wired synapsis in the neuronetwork. No long-term pair bonding is possible for a female after oxytocin depletion increasingly with each male whose DNA stays inside her DNA strands forever. Pair bonding for females no longer works even if they try to force it, they will self-sabotage it, or commit adultery”

A pastor himself hinted on this. You seem very intelligent. So I was curious if you had thoughts about this?

But more specifically, it sounds like materialistic determinism. There are many materialists who reject free will, and believe that everything is deterministic. When it comes to human behavior, they believe it is all determined by evolution, environment, genetics, and brain chemistry.

I think they’re wrong. Humans have free will. And though there certainly are limits on what we can do, we can choose what our beliefs and values will be, and how we are going to live our lives within our particular circumstances.

As for women sleeping with multiple partners having their brains wired so that they can’t engage in a faithful, committed marriage, I say hogwash. More likely they’ve simply decided they’re going to sleep around, and they have no particular reason to change their mind.

It is true that continuing to think, feel, and behave in a particular way tends to reinforce that way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. And the longer we follow that habit pattern, the stronger the habit becomes, and the harder it is to break it.

But it is still possible to break it. It’s just that it is going to take a conscious decision to change our life, together with the willingness to do the work of making the change. Many people simply don’t want to make that change, or they don’t want to make it enough to do the work required.

Brain chemistry and neural wiring may have a role in ingraining the habit patterns. But we are still human beings, and we can still change who we are and what direction we’re going in if we make a conscious decision to do so and commit ourselves to doing the hard work of personal change.

The guy is plain-spoken and entertaining, and he does make some decent points. But for the most part, he seems to have swallowed the Red Pill line whole, and does not have any real perspective on the situation with men and women.

A dead give-away is his big riff on sex dolls, and how they’re competing with real women for men.

Any man who would substitute a sex doll for a woman and think he’s getting a good deal is not a man that any decent, self-respecting woman would want to marry. The idea that a sex doll is a reasonable substitute for a woman shows that the man who thinks this way is altogether physical-minded about marriage. He thinks marriage is all about sex. Any man who thinks that way deserves to get stuck with a sex doll in his bed instead of a woman.

Real marriage is, first and foremost, a union of minds and hearts brought about by common motives, loves, values, and beliefs. All the rest, including living together in the same home and the physical union of sexual intercourse, is an expression of that inner union. Real marriage goes from the inside out, and from the top down.

Men (and women) who focus on the physical in a relationship, meaning on sex, and put that first, have gotten it exactly backwards. They will never be able to have any real, loving, and stable marriage. For men who think this way, a sex doll probably is better than a real woman. If such a man gets together with a real woman, sooner or later that relationship is going to crash and burn.

As for the courts always ruling in favor of the man, I can tell you from personal experience that that simply isn’t true. I’ve been divorced after a 20+ year marriage. The judge in the case was female. And I was able to walk away from the marriage with everything I wanted, which was 50% custody of my children, and the cutting of all financial ties with my ex-wife. No alimony. No child support. I did take on the marital debt, but that was an acceptable price to pay for getting everything I wanted in the divorce. Most of that debt was resolved within a few years. Now I am completely free to live my own life as I see fit, without any contact or entanglements with my ex-wife. She is also free to live her life as she sees fit. I am completely out of her life.

Patriarchal men who think the man is supposed to rule the roost and work to support the woman while the woman pops out babies, cooks, and cleans will get exactly that when they hit the divorce courts. They’ll still work and support the woman while she takes care of the children.

Yes, be careful about the attitudes with which you go into marriage, because the same pattern you set in your marriage is going to continue after the divorce, except you’ll no longer have the woman to cook, clean, and have sex with you.

In short, you get the kind of divorce that you set yourself up for by your beliefs and attitudes about men, women, and marriage.

_Still, that’s why it’s good to check your own experience against that of other people_

Yes. Well that’s the interesting part. While mgtow does go to extremes… I also can not say that I don’t partially sympathize with their concerns about marrying.

They have noted many times in countless ways the overall “mentality” and mindset of today’s women (in the last 10 or so years) has changed drastically. More so Shallow, and Superficial vs looking into the heart of a man. I honestly can’t help but to feel a deep sympathy for the humble men rooted with morals, values, spirituality looking to date or marry in this day and age.

Tinder is seen as the norm. It’s piled with single mothers too. Dating apps, being used for the sole purpose of getting the perfect man/with unrealistic superficial requirements (6 foot tall, 6 pack, high income, etc) and… with social media, and exposing yourself all over social media being the “norm” with women borderline “marketing themselves” opening the door to old “friends” and co-workers. They’ll say finding a loving, humble, low-maintenance type women in this day and age is like finding a big bag of money in a parking lot. So I guess, all of that sort of threw me for a loop being that I grew up around semi-conservative women who’s mindsets were nothing like this.

I must admit I do see married conservative appearing women, semi-flirting everywhere, and esp social media. Using it in a way that could certainly create unnecessary problems down the road. Social media also makes it very, very easy to “check out” with a plethora of other options/distractions during tough times In relationships. In the old days, if you split, you might feel the sting more. While naturally taking the time to reflect, learn, and miss each other.

It’s very normal and common to see women Advertising their lives to thousands of people (who can contact them privately at any time). Constantly showing off their lives. In the last 5 years, I can’t tell you how many people (who were in otherwise good relationships) I’ve heard mention that after their relationship ran into a “tough patch” and it wasn’t long after their s/o had an affair with an “old buddy” on Facebook. Even the statistics show that women cheat (almost) as much as men.. I hear many of husbands feeling a lack of respect, or appreciation, and a general feeling of being unwanted within just a few years of marriage. When I’m out it’s rare to see women without a phone in their face. Its very common to see married women wearing leggings see-through and air tIght. Now I’m no boyscout. But what man would want to be married to women who now think it’s ‘normal’ to walk around in public half-naked practically advertising.

Of course we know men can be just as guilty. But again, with all this said.. I can at least ‘sympathize’ with the concerns men have with getting married in this day and age.

Also, MGTOW seems to be mad at men for feeding into/enabling this behavior (giving non-stop attention to women on social media) and they do have a point there.

I also can’t say I blame them for not wanting to marry a woman who’s slept with dozens of men (which is also very common these days as well) While virgins before marriage hardly exist these days, at least women once seemed to not hand it away like candy. I had a colleague of mine randomly mention sex with 60+ men.. and she says “what? That less than 1 guy a month..” She says it as if that’s just what women do now.

If anything the aggressive MGTOW message, could at the least be a huge wake up call for men to be more careful and selective with whom they invest in. (But not to completely give up and go MGTOW)

One thing that particularly saddened me was a post from a man who felt lied and let down. He mentioned; “before I swallowed the red pill, I was taught my entire life that women wanted a good hearted man, who would open the door for them, romance them, take it slow, and treat them like a queen. We would feel like we can work through anything. That love and kindness were of the utmost importance, that those things came before anything else..”

In fact… I’ve seen many many posts similar to this. Sadly, this then seem to shift a mans mindset from seeing women as sweet, humble, gentle, faithful, nurturing, etc, to nothing else but a “pump and dump” object not worth getting close too or investing in.

For the ‘red pillers’ in relationships, their taught manipulation tactics, and forms of emotional abuse known as “dread game” sheesh. Just vaguely browsing some of it on reddit..(red pill trp) gives me somewhat similar vibes as a man by the name of…
Osho.

Well . . . it’s hard to be 100% wrong. Falsity is not an entirely different species than truth. Rather, falsity takes the truth and twists it into something that is no longer true.

All the things MGTOW say about women are true of some women some of the time. But they are not true of all women all of the time. Not by a long shot.

MGTOW, and the Red Pill movement in general, takes a group of men who have had bad experiences with women, puts them into an echo chamber with each other, and then inflates those particular experiences of a particular group of men with a particular group of women into grand universals and generalizations about all women. This is just one of the many ways that falsity is hatched out of truth.

It’s not that MGTOW are completely wrong. It’s that they think everyone’s experience of women must be like their experience of women, and all women must be like the women they have had relationships with. It’s like having a speck of mud on the pupil of your eye. That one little fleck of contamination causes the whole world to look dark and distorted.

Now to respond to a few of your specific points:

I don’t think women, or men, are any shallower than they ever were. Rather, I think what’s happening is that the shallowness that was always there is now coming out clearly into the light.

The reality is that marriage as a deep relationship of love uniting people’s hearts and minds into one hardly existed in society until very recently. That ideal of marriage has been around for few hundred years at most, and only in the last half century or so has it become a dominant view of love and marriage in society. This may seem unbelievable to people today, but the fact is that in previous centuries marriage was mostly about social, cultural, family, and financial benefits. Love, if it existed at all, was just a pleasant add-on. And even the “love” that did exist was mostly about superficial appreciation of a “prize” partner who had more money, or more physical attractiveness, or better social connections than other possible partners.

The common idea that women (and men) have “gone superficial” shows a lack of perspective on where marriage and relationships are today compared to where they used to be. The “solid marriages” years past were mostly based on external social, financial, and legal pressure that made it ruinous for people to get divorced. Adultery was common, but mostly hidden, as were all of the other sexual and relationship evils, such as spousal and child abuse and sexual abuse of minors.

Today, the external restraints that used to keep people in superficial marriages are being rapidly relaxed and removed. What’s happening is not “the breakdown of marriage,” but the revealing of what the quality of marriage, and of men and women, has been all along.

The real difference is that today many people actually do marry for deeper reasons of love and commonality of values and outlook, rather than the almost entirely superficial reasons for which people used to marry. And the surprising thing is not all the divorces, but that without all the external social, financial, and legal pressures that used to keep mismatched or superficially matched people together, so many marriages do last rather than breaking up.

There are initial indications that millennials are marrying later and less, but that when they do marry, their marriages last longer. I believe we are seeing the beginning of a new attitude and approach to marriage that is less superficial and more equality-based. It’s a lot more work than marriage used to be when the penalties for divorce were swift and severe, and that kept mismatched people together in dead marriages. But the marriages that do survive today have a far deeper and more solid foundation than those old, externally-bonded marriages.

As far as women “advertising themselves,” they’ve always done that, as have men. Now there are just more powerful tools to do it with. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Superficial women will find it easier to find the particular types of superficial men that are a good match for them, and vice versa. More thoughtful and principle-driven women will also have more powerful tools for finding more thoughtful and principle-driven men.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but men who are seeing superficial women everywhere may very well be seeing those women because that’s what they’re looking for. Personally, I don’t see superficial women everywhere. I have deep, thoughtful conversations with women on a weekly basis here on the blog. And in my daily life I also interact with many good and thoughtful women who are working to make this world a better place. Sure, I see superficial women also. But in general, you see what you’re looking for. MGTOW will see every superficial woman out there, even while more thoughtful women are passing right by them.

If a MGTOW sees a sexily clad woman in a crowd of ordinarily dressed women, what is he going to focus on? The ordinarily dressed women all fade into the background as he gets his boxers all in a knot about the woman showing all that cleavage, top and bottom.

As for women in skimpy clothing “showing their wares,” though I’m not a big fan of sexualized clothing, I will also say that younger generations are less hung up about the human body than older generations. In a culture in which showing an ankle or a wrist is seen as lewd and racy, women must completely cover themselves. But in a culture in which the beauty of the human body is accepted and appreciated, women can wear bikinis, or less, and nobody’s getting a hard-on.

The whole idea that women “deserve” what they get because of their skimpy, “suggestive” clothing is as much a function of the men who are looking as it is of the women they are looking at. Men who have lewd thoughts about women will see a woman as “showing off her wares.” Men who see women as human beings rather than as sex objects will appreciate a woman’s beauty without getting a headful of wanting to get into her pants.

For young people today it is common to get together wearing little or no clothing. In previous generations this would have driven the guys wild. But today there is a level of body acceptance that didn’t previously exist. Young people just think of this as normal. Sure, many of them are still on the make. That’s always been true, in every generation. But many of them are just enjoying each other’s company, and not thinking the lewd and lustful thoughts that their parents would have been thinking if they’d seen each other with so little covered.

Of course, it’s messy because we live in a mixed society. But it’s good to keep in mind that older generations are looking at younger generations from the perspective of the older generations’ norms and practices, and reacting as if people of their generation had dressed and acted that way. That’s simply not how people of the younger generations see and act around each other.

I remember as a teenager going to England and thinking that all of the people were dressed funny and had funny haircuts. But to each other, they looked completely normal. It’s just that styles in the U.S. were different from styles in Britain. They probably thought I was funny-looking.

In short, you have to judge a particular generation and culture by its own norms and standards, not by outside norms and standards.

Personally, I think we need to get over our hangups about male and female bodies so that we can focus on what really matters: inner connections of love and common values and goals in life. And I do believe that in the midst of all the relationship chaos, that is the direction things are going.

As for rampant sex, sure, some people are doing that. And they’re the ones who get all the press. Women and men who live rather modestly, and don’t sleep around, aren’t out there trumpeting their non-conquests. They’re just quietly going about their lives. The media reports what’s lurid and shocking. It doesn’t report the ordinary lives of everyday people. That wouldn’t sell papers, TV programs, and websites.

Is it bad for women to sleep with 60+ men? I think so.

Is it bad for men to sleep with 60+ women? I think so.

It used to be that men would brag about sleeping with 60+ women, but if they came across a woman who had slept with 60+ men, they’d call her a slut and a whore. In my opinion, a man who sleeps with 60+ women is just as much a slut and a whore as a woman who does so. Why do men get to brag about the same thing women are supposed to be ashamed of? That makes no sense whatsoever, morally speaking.

What’s happening is that the tables are gradually being evened out. Men are beginning to be held to the same standards as women. We still have a long way to go on that. But I think that’s a good thing. Why should women be shamed and men praised for doing the very same thing?

And as for affairs . . . well, every heterosexual affair involves both a man and a woman. The idea that women used to be more virtuous and less likely to have affairs than men, and that this makes today’s women worse than those wonderful women of yesteryear, is just plain silly. In the “good old days” a century or two ago, for every man who was having an affair (and there were lots of them), there was also a woman having an affair. It’s just that it was more likely to be hushed up and ignored. The social consequences for the cuckolded husband would be disastrous. Public exposure and divorce was a desperate last resort.

Today, what’s been happening all along is out in the open, studied by scientists and reported on in the media. Women, and men, have not gotten worse or more promiscuous. Rather, the promiscuity that existed all along is now out in the open, and seen for what it is.

In the long run, that’s a good thing. You can’t correct society’s ills until you see them. Now we know exactly what’s going on with men and women sexually. This makes it possible for us to make real, information- and experience-based decisions on how we want to run our lives.

In the midst of all this, people who want a good, stable, committed relationship can still have that kind of a relationship. It may take some time and effort to find the right partner, but for every man who is of that character (as compared to men who loudly complain about slutty women, but are sluts themselves), there is a woman out there who is looking for that man of good character.

If MGTOW don’t find those women, it’s not only because they’re looking in all the wrong places, but also because they’re looking with jaundiced eyes. How do you find a good woman if the fundamental article of your faith is that there are no good women?

For good men looking for good women, they are out there. And for good women looking for good men, they are also out there. Seek, and you shall find.

Very interesting point you made about women not being different these days. I was under the impression that they more conservative sexually in the past 20+ years than today. I grew up in the 90’s (and at least where I’m from) the ‘majority’ of those women made you wait months, and usually you would be bf/gf.. whereas now, I’m hearing that with the “hookup culture” women are having casual sex like it’s no big deal. But hey, it’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of conservative women too.

I’ll give it to you. Your certainly able to see the good. I was always that way myself, I could find the silver lining in anything. But, I must admit, it’s been a bit of a struggle as of late as I’ve stumbled into some very odd places. Especially on the internet. It’s even rattled my faith a bit.. but I think we all go through this from time to time.

“MGTOW will see every superficial woman out there, even while more thoughtful women are passing right by them”

Yeah,this is a good point. In fact, I have heard women personally tell me this as well.

“In the midst of all this, people who want a good, stable, committed relationship can still have that kind of a relationship. It may take some time and effort to find the right partner, but for every man who is of that character (as compared to men who loudly complain about slutty women, but are sluts themselves), there is a woman out there who is looking for that man of good character.”

That’s good to know. As you mentioned, I think it may just take some extra effort from some of these guys. I think perhaps many of these guys want to it be easy, or just fall into their lap. I think a big part of that is having faith that it can exist..

“In short, you get the kind of divorce that you set yourself up for by your beliefs and attitudes about men, women, and marriage”

Man, that’s deep. Simple but so profound.

As far as the pastors video, It’s what my instincts told me. What’s odd in some of his videos he seem biased against women. I’ve never seen a pastor speak that way. Glad someone agrees with me 😊

In my spare time I also try to help others who may be lost, or in need of a positive message as well. Hope you don’t mind but I think I’m might have to steer a few this way. They need to read some of this. Heck, I wish all MGTOW, and RedPill would see this. I’ve yet to meet one who seems genuinely content.

Just to be clear, women are behaving differently today than they did several centuries ago or even several decades ago. But on the negative side (such as sexual promiscuity), that’s not because women have changed, but because external circumstances have changed.

Several centuries ago, and even several decades ago, few women who were not prostitutes slept around freely because doing so would have been socially and financially ruinous to them. They were not any more virtuous or less superficial than today’s women. It’s just that external circumstances prevented them from being promiscuous. Men, meanwhile, commonly were quite promiscuous because there were nowhere near the social and financial consequences for men being promiscuous as there were for women. In fact, men were often rewarded socially for being promiscuous.

Today, in liberal Western society especially, the external strictures that kept women “chaste” are being dismantled. More and more, women are not being held to different standards than men. As a result, women are more and more free to be promiscuous, just as men have long been fairly free to be promiscuous. The result is what we would expect: women are behaving more like men have long behaved in this regard.

But not all women.

Just as has always been the case, some women have morals, beliefs, and values that they follow that involve not being immoral and promiscuous, but reserving sexual intimacy for a loving, faithful, committed marriage. Some women are more strong-minded about this, some less so, but in general these women are not interested in shallow sex just for the sake of pleasure. They want something deeper. Even if they may make some missteps along the way, these women will continue to look for something deeper in a relationship.

Some men are the same way—and that has always been the case. Not all men have been, or are today, promiscuous, seeking to rack up as many sexual conquests or sleep with as many women as they can. Some men, also, seek something deeper in life and in marriage, and are not interested in the hookup culture.

In other words, internally it is the same situation it’s always been: some women and men are of good and strong character and morals, others are less so, and others are very loose and immoral. The difference is that now, when it comes to sexual morality, those who are immoral or amoral feel much freer to express it because there are far fewer negative consequences. This is especially true for immoral or amoral women, because unlike men, women who weren’t prostitutes were kept under the thumb of a heavy external “morality” that punished them severely for being sexually immoral, whereas now that heavy thumb is being lifted.

(But it never really was about morality. It was mostly about men making sure than when they married and had sex with a woman, the offspring was his own, and not some other man’s. Unlike women, historically men could not be sure that a child was their own unless they controlled sexual access to women. Today, DNA tests are changing that.)

Whether you see this relaxing of external restraints as a good thing or as a bad thing, what’s happening is not that women are getting more immoral, but that the immorality or amorality that was there all the time in some segment of the female population can now express itself, just as the immorality or amorality of men has long been given license to express itself.

I say “amoral” as well as immoral because having loose morals does not necessarily mean that someone is an evil person. It can also mean that a person simply wasn’t brought up with any strong moral compass. This is why we can’t necessarily judge women, or men, who sleep with many partners as being evil and sinful. In order to violate one’s conscience and act sinfully such that one is spiritually culpable and in danger of damnation, one must have developed a conscience in the first place. Many people today are simply not being brought up with the idea that sleeping around is a bad thing. And if such people do it, they are not spiritually liable for it as would be someone who has been taught and knows very well that promiscuity is wrong and against God’s commandments, but is promiscuous anyway. That’s why it is good to withhold judgment, and not condemn people whose background, upbringing, and conscience we don’t know.

Regardless of whether a person, man or woman, believes that sex with many partners is wrong, promiscuity does have negative effects. But that would be a whole new discussion. I do believe it’s important to teach and inculcate morals. It’s just that the idea that people, and especially women, are much more immoral today than they used to be is true only externally. It is not true internally. People have long been sexually immoral internally. Now those who are internally immoral are expressing it instead of suppressing it.

Even that is not necessarily a bad thing. Once again, we can’t cure society’s ills, or our own personal ills, until we see them. External suppression may keep people in line, but it is at the cost of their never facing their true internal character, and therefore never growing and developing spiritually. Today, with the relaxing of many external restraints, we can see more clearly where our internal morality or lack thereof leads to, and make a conscious decision about what sort of life we want to live. As disconcerting as it is to see so many people living in sexually immoral ways, I still think it’s better for the inner reality of human hearts, minds, and spirits to be seen clearly so that we can make up our own minds what sort of people we want to be.

No one is forcing anyone to be sexually immoral (though of course, sexual assault does victimize and severely harm its victims). Anyone who wants to live a sexually moral life is still free to do so. And despite the fact that there are no longer the severe social and financial penalties that used to control people’s, and especially women’s, sexual lives, many women and men continue to choose morality over immorality. And those who choose to live a moral and spiritual life continue to seek one another so that they can have good, loving, faithful monogamous relationships and marriages.

Of course, you’re welcome to refer people to this series of articles on the Red Pill. Just be aware that they’ll read them through whatever glasses they’re wearing.

I do think there are some long-term MGTOW and Red Pillers that are more philosophical and are content with their lives. But I tend to agree, based on what I’ve seen around the web, that the bulk of them are not at all happy with their lives. That’s not surprising, since the dominant idea in the Red Pill movement (whether or not it was its original idea) is being mad about women.

Sandman appears to have the largest base. His videos get decent amount of views, but I often wonder if many of those views are from true mgtows vs “curious viewers” mgtow men tend to spam/Disturb other large relationship based comment sections “advertising Mgtow” In fact that’s what prompted myself to go check out a mgtow video myself. I too am curious to know where you are deriving your data from.

My first reaction is that everything in the video is about biological, physical, and material things. Testosterone and estrogen. Sex drive and having sex. Earnings and finances. Clearly this particular MGTOW—and my sense is that this is true of MGTOW in general—has a completely physical and materialistic view of relationships and marriage. There is nothing whatsoever about people seeking a partner to share their life with, to pursue common goals, to make the world a better place. Not a single word.

The MGTOW view of marriage is purely about biology, sex, and money. Only they’re trying to fight what biology and sex are all about: reproducing and perpetuating the species. That’s the irony of it. They want to believe they’re all about science, biology, and evolution, but they’re fighting against the primary drives of biology and evolution. And they’re going to lose. The world will be populated by the people, men and women, who reproduce, not the ones who don’t. And people are going to keep reproducing. In the long run, MGTOW is a self-limiting movement. The Shakers aren’t doing so well either.

As far as the statistics, if you look at sex and marriage as a purely physical and biological thing, some of what he said makes sense, though I noticed that at several points he placed his turning points at the wrong place on the chart. For example, the chart shows testosterone in men starting to decline in around age 25, whereas he for no apparent reason places the turning point at 35 instead. Also, the decline is rather gradual, unlike the precipitous decline of estrogen levels in women after their mid-30s. He’s trying to make the charts say something that they don’t really say. That’s what happens when you don’t believe in having kids.

As you say, he also blames feminism for the decline in marriage. And while feminism might be one factor, I seriously doubt that it is the main factor. I even doubt that it is one of the major factors. MGTOW have this great big huge hairy bogey-woman of feminism stuck right in front of their eyes. It becomes the whipping-girl and scapegoat for every bad thing that happens in society. It’s not rational. It’s an emotional reaction that has no sound basis in science or statistics.

There are many factors that affect when people marry, and how many children they have. For example, people who are more financially secure tend to marry later and have fewer children, whereas people who are less financially secure tend to marry earlier and have more children. It’s not so much that immigrants are having more children, as that poorer people are having more children, and immigrants and minorities tend to be poorer than whites. Feminism has very little to do with it.

As for the decline in marriage rates generally, that doesn’t necessarily mean people aren’t in marriage-like relationships. That’s a decline in legal marriage. Many people who are in committed and monogamous relationships are simply deciding not to get legally married. What the real rates of singleness are I don’t know. But I suspect that if you included stable unmarried couples, those statistics would look quite different.

In short, this MGTOW, like most whose articles and videos I’ve looked at:

Has a completely physical-minded view of marriage and relationships.

Attempts to buck and fight against the very biology that he invokes to support his theories.

Thankyou, and yes, Im seeing this more and more from this group which to me is a red flag within itself. There is nothing whatsoever about people seeking a partner to “share their life with, to pursue common goals, to make the world a better place. Not a single word” as you put.

about feminism, that is the thing I am still sort of stumped or at least the way they harp on it lol where did this come from? I would think women (with any sense) do what they want based on their own beliefs. Not because of feminism or what a feminist “believes”. Sure there may be influences, and I even see women speaking out against feminism, (which I find interesting) but yet… it doesn’t seem ‘so bad’ that I should forever sware off even the possibility of intimate relationships with a woman.

It’s like this thing with AWALT briefly explained by a MGTOW.

Im thinking why would anyone need to go through some process of rage, anger, despair, even suicide, as illustrated in that video? Wow that’s pretty dramatic lol My goodness nothing should do that to a man.

Is it really that big a deal that women (can) and do cheat? Or that want/find it attractive to be with a man to support or provide? Yeah sure women do marry men who can provide/a nice lifestyle, but how women marry JUST for that? I’m starting to believe that these guys never witnessed a good through thick and thin relationship between a man or women. Either that or terrible at picking women or emotionally available, etc.

Sandman: ALWAL’T’

My question to you is: If your daughter is beautiful and a doctor, would you want her to marry someone who is moreso her ‘equal’? financially (Or close?) Of course providing he truly loves her, is committed to the relationship, etc) For me, as a man, does it help knowing he’s a guy with a job, looking to at least genuinely better his life. It does seem odd when a man doesn’t work or have some level of ambition. Personally, I’m encouraging my kids to get their life together first (college, etc. ) before kids/anything too serious.

Its her choice. But I especially wouldn’t want my daughter to be an uneducated mother/housewife without the abiliy to provide for herself if needed. Nothing worse than being in a relationship, with a person who uses that to be more important because they are the “breadwinner”

MRAs and MGTOW seem to think that all of men’s problems are because of, or made worse by, women. Feminism, to them, represents all of the evils of women. They have this nutty idea that women are now running the world. Reality doesn’t agree with them. Men still hold most of the positions of power and wealth in this world.

What is true is that men increasingly can’t get away with mistreating women anymore. MGTOW and MRAs speak as if all of the sexual abuse allegations that women make against men are false. But the fact of the matter is that most of them are true. (Yes, some are false, and that is a real problem.) While there has been some collateral damage to men who didn’t actually do what they were accused of doing, most of the men who have been toppled from high position were guilty of what they were accused of, and cannot be allowed to remain in positions where they will victimize and abuse women.

Men have to learn to respect women, and have to learn how to respect women. It this day and age, those men who don’t, or won’t, deserve to be taken down. Women are human beings. They deserve basic human respect. In any regular workplace, the fact that they are female is not their primary attribute, nor should it be treated as such.

The first video you posted, by “The Inconspicuous Man,” is probably about the mildest and most thoughtful statement that could be made about AWALT. But it still falls short of convincing me.

I raised children, and I told them not to accept things from strangers, get into a car with strangers, etc. But I didn’t tell them, “All Strangers Are Like That.” I told them not to trust strangers because they don’t know them.

Further, MGTOW are grown men, not children. Parents must take responsibility for their children. Grown men must take responsibility for themselves. Part of taking responsibility for oneself is not blaming other people for your problems. Sure, new MGTOW should stay away from women. But that’s not because all women are evil. It’s because “baby” MGTOW don’t know how to deal with women, and they don’t know how to tell a good woman from a bad one. So the thing more mature MGTOW should be saying to them is not, “All Women Are Like That,” but, “You are in no position to be going out with a woman. Get your own $#!& together first.”

But the fact is, MGTOW in general (with some exceptions) do think all women are selfish and evil. It’s a primary article of their faith. And the second video you posted, by Sandman, underlines that. He does not have the perspective, or perhaps restraint, that Inconspicuous Man—who actually uses the term “good woman”—has. Sandman thinks MGTOW are just telling the truth about how terrible women are, and that’s why women don’t like MGTOW.

Sandman seems to be the flip-side of the feminists he hates. Some radical feminists think women can do no wrong and men can do no right. Sandman seems to think that women can do no right, and men can do no wrong. He doesn’t even consider the possibility that maybe some of those powerful male executives were actually sexual predators, and they should not only not be in positions of power, but should be in jail. Apparently, according to Red Pill philosophy, there is no such thing as a sexual predator; men can do whatever they want to women because women are just T&A walking the streets. What assholes! Men who think that way deserve to have no good women in their lives. And they deserve to have a pack of angry feminists ripping them to shreds.

Oh, and I notice that the visuals on Sandman’s video are almost entirely beautiful women. What’s up with that? All women are gold-digging, soul-sucking whores, and I’m going to dress up my video with lots of sexy women? These guys are a pack of contradictions.

I would like to know whether Inconspicuous Man advises mature MGTOW that now they are ready to go out, find a good woman, and have a relationship with her. It would be a bit of a contradiction, wouldn’t it? A MGTOW in a relationship with a woman? Is Inconspicuous Man a MGTOW, or is he not? Does he actually believe that there are good women out there, that are worth being in a relationship with? And that maybe he himself would get into a relationship with such a woman?

As for beautiful and competent women, yes, I would advise them to find a man who is a match for them in character and accomplishments. I have no sympathy whatsoever for men who want to sit on their fat butts all day smoking joints, drinking beer, eating pizza, and playing video games, and expect that some beautiful woman is going to drop into their lap and think they’re amazing just because they have a penis. If a man wants a decent woman, he’d better be a decent man. And not in order to get a good woman, but because that’s what a man does. A real man does something with his life. It doesn’t really matter what it is, as long as it’s something good and constructive that contributes to the overall well-being of society in some way. Then, and only then, is he in any position to be wooing and winning a woman as his partner in life.

And yes, I have come to believe that women should be able to support themselves, and not just depend upon a man to support them. I don’t think it’s wrong for women to devote their lives to raising their children, especially in their children’s younger years, if that’s something she and her husband believe in. But if a woman is so dependent upon her husband that she’d have to go on the welfare rolls if she ever lost him, that’s not a good and confident position to be in. A woman should be able to stand on her own two feet. From that basis, she can attract and connect with a good man to be her partner in life.

You kinda prove you truly are a BETA MALE…by assuming MOST “allegations against women are true”….so you believe all the allegations from Kavanaugh, the President, and the “me too” are true…You are a very naive person…if they were true why not REPORT IT IMMEDIATELY…nowadays an allegation is all a woman needs to be believed and BETAS like you are the ones that enable it….

Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. I’ll ignore the STANDARD MGTOW NAME-CALLING and deal with the substance.

I didn’t say “all.” I said “most.” And yes, I believe that most allegations of sexual abuse, whether made by women or men, and whether against men or women, are true. Some are false, and yes, false accusations of all sorts, and especially of sexual misconduct, can be very damaging to an innocent person.

Why haven’t people reported such offenses immediately? Because up until very recently there was little chance that any action would be taken against the perpetrators, while the accusers would be publicly humiliated, fired from their jobs, shunned by society, and so on. This applies not just to women who reported sexual abuse years later, but also to men who waited many years to report sexual abuse perpetrated upon them by clergy or sports coaches when they were children and teens. It’s the same dynamic regardless of the sex of the victim or the perpetrator. Though it is far less common, women are sometimes the perpetrators, and men are sometimes the victims.

Today, such accusations are finally beginning to be taken seriously. That’s why more women and men are stepping forward with them.

But even now, they have little to gain from making such accusations. Rarely is there any kind of compensation for the victims. Their names still often get dragged through the mud. They may still lose their job, and be marked as “problem employees” who will have difficulty finding a new job. Meanwhile, though a number of men have been toppled from their positions, others continue in their positions despite the allegations made against them. And despite all the government regulations and all the HR departments in the corporations, sexual harassment and abuse is still common in many companies, schools, and churches.

It is you, my friend, who are naively burying your head in the sand if you refuse to recognize the reality of the situation. MGTOW doctrine practically requires its adherents to consider women to be inferior beings, deserving of whatever abuse may be heaped upon them. And MGTOW doctrine practically requires its adherents to consider all men to be poor, abused victims of those terrible feminazis.

The fact is, for every gold-digging woman there is a man who is an abusive jerk. Not all men are like that. And not all women are like that either. If you choose to view the world in stark and deceptive blacks and whites, you’ll be just as blind to the human reality as the radical feminists that you revile.

You nailed it. Especially the part about “baby mtgow” – when the smoke clears.. that really is the accurate way to put it.

About sandman absolutely as far as the women pics. That whole show he does is odd and even creepy. The guy dedicates his life making hundreds of videos about women and for what, I ask? He seems to purposely want to stir his viewers up.

I’m curious though what do you specifically think this rage, grieving, and even suicide, to self actualization. “process” is that was mentioned in the first video. Do you think their implying that when guys figure out how bad women are, it’s so bad that they go through a process that’s like the death of a loved one? Lol.

As for AWALT.. there seems to be different definitions. But from what Ive seen.. it’s not that all women are bad. But it’s in their bad “nature”, to screw you, leave you, etc. or that they “can” screw you.. so steer clear of them. But by that logic.. we also say that men that “could” beat or rape a women. It’s senseless.

Sometimes I wonder if mgtow would be happy if all men were in the same with them. The fear-mongering with marriage, hypergamy, women’s nature, alwalt, etc I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’m sure some of those of guys have a legitimate gripe. But there’s another part of me that isn’t surprised that many of them had such problems with women. I’ll surely check out the article.

About the rage and grief, keep in mind that MGTOW commonly become MGTOW because they’ve had a bad experience with women. Or several bad experiences women. Or a truly hellish experience with a woman.

Men are not emotionless rocks. They have hearts, and their hearts can get ripped out and stomped upon. And that is a crushing experience. It’s not surprising that many of them come into the movement in states of rage and grief. It may not be the death of a loved one, but it’s the death of love, and that can be almost as bad. Some of them have been burned so badly that they may never be able to trust a woman again. And though generally I think that MGTOW have a superficial, physical-minded, immature, and self-centered attitude toward women and relationships, it’s also true that some women will indeed rip your heart out through your throat and trample upon it if you’re unlucky enough to get tangled up with them.

In short, the rage and grief part does make some sense. But it still doesn’t justify demonizing all women.

As for AWALT, the first video is basically saying, “Well, it doesn’t really mean that ALL women are like that.” If that’s so, then why say “All Women Are Like That”? There are other things you could say that are more accurate, but that have the same force of keeping men who shouldn’t be with women temporarily or permanently away from women.

Further, the “that” that they’re all “like” is pretty bad. Read the descriptions of AWALT. They’re saying that functionally, all women are self-centered bitches who will suck a man dry and then walk away when he’s of no more use to them. How is that functionally any different from saying that all women are evil? Evil is as evil does.

About Sandman, is he MGTOW or PUA? If he’s PUA, all the sexy women in his videos make some sense—though in that case, he’s basically an animal. But if he’s MGTOW, then all the sexy women mean that he’s still highly attached to women. And that’s a bit of a contradiction if you’re supposedly MGTOW, isn’t it?

Oh absolutely. I’m certainly sympathetic of that. But I do not recall them linking the rage process in the context of an actual “personal event” with a woman.

They often times use rage and even the term “red pill rage” to describe a “process” i.e: after swallowing the metaphorical red pill they wake up to the reality of… xxx and xxxx.. become self actualized and see the “real” truth the “light” (I don’t get what’s ‘so’ bad that they would go through an usual rage process, unless what red pill/Mgtow is teaching is false)

Wherever unusual rage is I think it’s starting to become clear (or at least clearer) after reading through certain comment sections that MGTOW men always seem to invade.

Here’s just a sampling of a story I read today in a comment section. (I’m sparing some very explicit details.. but it was hard to read)

“I slept with a girl who was in love with another puerto rican man. A Russian girl who was engaged. I drove her so wild (went into explicit details) that she broke up with her fiancé and wanted to be with me. I didn’t know she was engaged. He found out and committed suicide. this is ‘true nature’ of women”

Now imagine reading stories like that.. pile on the rest of the red pill/mgtow campaign: hypergamy, unfair divorce laws, feminism, horror stories, male suicide rates, “they only want sex with a ‘bad boy’, but later on settle with nice guys to be their “beta cuck providers”, wrap it all up with “ALWALT”

“…women can never love you the way you love them… they often times divorce men, and are on to the next man.. while the man is left broken”

uh… that would make me angry too. Hell, it makes me mad and I’m in a 20+ year marriage, and know better! LOL

Anyhow, poke a man enough (esp a man already vulnerable and angry) with all of that.. You’ve now all but stripped his ability to love a women, or see any “hope” that he can be loved by a woman in any sort of meaningful relationship with a woman. And that’s where it’s sad.. you can literally see it in them too. Some even advocate beating women.( I invite you to visit one of sandman’s comment sections and you’ll see what I mean)

That has to be one of the most hurtful things a man can ever be taught or led to believe by red pill/MGTOW teachings. Especially, when he’s been told his entire life that women are sweet, kind hearted, loyal, loving, more emotional than sexual, wants a man for his good heart not the resources/sacrifice he could provide for her.

And it’s lies.. half truths, but most of all… severely lacking in a deeper understanding /perspective, that could potentially change his outlook on women, himself, and future relationships. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt if the story above was made up — or Greatly exaggerated just to rile men up. Most all women are emotional/relate emotions to sex. If this were actually a true story, I could guarantee you that;

A: she was young/has issues
B: or was severely neglected/emotionally disconnected from her partner.
C: or the man was foolish and didn’t see obvious red flags.

Point being. No way does a healthy mature women do something like that out of the blue in a reasonably sound relationship. Nothing like what he’s portraying.

And also.. (to some of your other points) nothing about how to better yourself in potential future relationships. Very little to Nothing about empowering men on a deeper level whatsoever.

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Further, the “that” that they’re all “like” is pretty bad. Read the descriptions of AWALT. They’re saying that functionally, all women are self-centered bitches who will suck a man dry and then walk away when he’s of no more use to them. How is that functionally any different from saying that all women are evil? Evil is as evil does

Absolutely!

As for as sandman that is a good point., I can only guess he uses the sexy women images to make fun of them or be appealing to the eye for his videos, or as you said he’s still attached. It’s probably all of the above. But he advises to just use women as objects here and there. “Pump and dump” as they call it. He’s actually against PUA’s, as they spend their life chasing tail/female validation.

Whether you look at it from a biological/evolutionary standpoint or a psychological/spiritual standpoint, the sexual/marital relationship is wired very deep into human beings, both male and female. “Taking the red pill” is not only a matter of having bad experiences with women and realizing that the marriage or relationship the guy thought he had, or was going to have, is a train wreck. It’s also “realizing” that he’s never going to have the sort of close relationship with a woman that he always thought he’d have, whether he thought of it physically, socially, or spiritually—or all of the above. Red Pill rage is about broken dreams of love and companionship with a woman. It’s terribly wrenching because those dreams come from a very deep place in the human psyche and in the evolutionary biology of the human animal.

Part of the problem is that women have been put on a pedestal for so long. The whole “women are sweet, kind-hearted, loyal, loving, more emotional than sexual,” etc. thing. Ironically, feminists hate the women-on-a-pedestal thing. They want women to be seen for who and what they are, not as some imaginary idealized being that doesn’t exist in real life.

The reality is that women are not any better than men morally, spiritually, and so on. Women are simply one of the human sexes. They have all of the usual shortcomings that human beings have, only with a female slant rather than a male slant. This often means that women are not as obviously selfish jerks as men are. But women, especially young women, are just as often selfish jerks as men are. It takes them just as long to grow and mature into decent, thoughtful people. It’s just that girls and women are commonly brought up to be pleasing, fun, and ingratiating around other people, and especially around men, so it’s easier to miss the reality that they’re no better than men—who are more often brought up to be assertive, brash, demanding, and so on. And these tendencies also seem to be in the evolutionary psychology of women and men as well. It’s like the difference between male and female genitals. Men’s are right out there. Women’s are hidden.

When boys are brought up to believe that women are demure, delicate, chaste beings whose life is all about making men happy, and then those boys grow up into men, get into relationships with women, and eventually discover that women’s *$%^ stinks just as much as men’s does, it feels like a “revelation” about women—that they’re selfish, dirty, immoral creatures . . . nothing like the dreamy, ethereal women that were supposed to be out there just waiting to make them happy. Then the shortcomings of women look huge exactly because they so blatantly don’t match what he was brought up to believe. And now the pendulum swings all the way the other way, so that the “truth” is that women are HORRIBLE.

But that’s not true either. Women are mixed, good and bad, just as men are—especially young women and young men. If boys and girls were brought up with a more realistic picture of who we are as men, women, and human beings, discovering that women have real and serious flaws would not be such a shattering experience, and “taking the red pill” would not feel like such a revelatory experience.

Beyond that, my general experience of MGTOW (not all MGTOW, but an awful lot of them) is that they’re sorta jerks. They tend to be angry, insulting, bigoted, intolerant types. And I’m not going to let them get away with the excuse that it’s just “red pill rage.” A jerk is a jerk. Not everyone whose world is shattered turns into an asshole. But MGTOW as a group have concluded, “My life is all effed up, and it’s all women’s fault.” So then they think they have a license to be assholes to women. (Sorry for the crude language, but it is metaphorically accurate.)

MGTOW who don’t go monk, but do the “pump and dump” thing, are a case in point. They’ve concluded that women just want to use a man, and will dump him once he’s of no further use to them. So what do they do? They turn around and do exactly the same thing to women. It’s an immature and jerky response. “You hit me, so I’ll hit you back even harder.” What kind of a world does that lead to?

Sooner or later, a man needs to grow up, take responsibility for his own life, and act like a decent human being instead of a retaliatory jerk. A decent, thoughtful, self-respecting and self-responsible man (or woman) doesn’t spend his life getting back at and using the people he thinks have wronged him. This is what Jesus was talking about when he said:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:38–42)

It’s not about making yourself into a doormat. It’s about breaking out of the retaliatory cycle and building a better and more thoughtful life both for yourself and for the people around you. See:Can Christians be Hardass?

Most MGTOW seem to be stuck in blaming other people (women) for all of their problems, getting back at them, and not taking responsibility for their own lives. It’s not going to get them anywhere except mad, sad, and lonely.

Absolutely, it’s hardly even adult behavior. And not just toward women, but other men. They go as far as to tear other men down for simply being in relationships or marriages. Calling married men “enslaved mules” Even worse, is accusing others of “shaming” them, when they are first to do this themselves. I have little tolerance for that.

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“The reality is that women are not any better than men morally, spiritually, and so on”

When you say ‘pedestal’, what do you mean exactly? As if they are perfect and can do no wrong? In my experience, women ‘are’ alot like good things I was taught (as described above) above actually. Especially, when they are treated with respect themselves. They do dream of a “soulmate” / good man, having children, etc But are they perfect. Of course not. Can they admit fault? Of course not. (Lol kidding)

But most all the women I see loose and promiscuous also come from a lack of self worth/self respect. Some are calculating gold diggers as well preying on men. So why not just steer clear of those, and if a good one comes along, hey why not? The relationship is what you make it. For the more mature married women- the ones who do cheat do so for the reasons of emotional disconnect/neglect as me mentioned. (And not one month or two months of it.. but years.) Which makes it understandable.

But the majority, (not all) of mgtow I think the bigger unrealized problem is picking women, or women not matched for them. The women they all describe have narcissist like traits. Ironically their “great leader” Sandman happened to date— 4 women and 3 of them were narcissist as well. THREE narcissist! Hmm

Anyhow, heres where Red/Pill MGTOW crosses a serious line to me.

-AWALT

-the claims that women who have had 5 sexual partners are incapable of maturing into a desirable mate capable of love or marriages. (Pair bonding) isn’t true. (I know women who were full blown free lovin’ hippies, who later settled down and weren’t cheaters and had stable marriages, kids, the whole 9. )

-Don’t ever say that you shouldn’t ask a women about dating advice, saying they ‘don’t know what they want themselves’. that’s terrible. With that mindset.. It shuts down room for understanding and growth which is what women and men should be doing.

By saying these things its needlessly hurting other men and potentially creating more pain and anger in them.

I’ll check out the link.. and love that Mathew script btw. Have read it many times 🙂 so very true. If only we all could remind ourselves of that!

There are certain stereotypes of women, which usually make them either much better or much worse than they actually are. There’s the “femme fatale” stereotype: the vampire woman who will suck your blood in your sleep. And there’s the virtuous woman who thinks of everyone but herself, and is the sweetest, meekest being on earth, who, of course, never has a sexual thought because she’s utterly “chaste.”

I suppose there may be a few women that fit each of these stereotypes to a T. But very few. Most women are mixed, just like men. And most women do think about sex, and have a desire for sex just as men do, even if it is a female variety of sexual desire rather than a male variety of sexual desire.

Also, if a woman has been trained to be good, that doesn’t make her spiritually good. Women who have been well-trained in the social graces can use that to get their own way, while appearing to be the sweetest, nicest beings on earth. That’s how they were trained to appear. But it doesn’t make them unselfish beings. That requires women, as well as men, to decide to be unselfish. And to work on it.

Women who have been trained to be “nice” may not even realize they’re just in it for their own benefit. As long as they’re nice, people treat them nice, and they think everything is wonderful, and the world is full of sweetness and light. But they’re still often angling to be the center of attention, or to have some man take care of them so they don’t have to lift a finger, or some such thing. Not all, of course. But many women who know how to be a “good” woman, because that’s how they’ve been trained, have a self-absorbed heart underneath it all.

Usually it comes out sooner or later. And it can be a rude awakening. Sometimes it’s when they realize they hate their marriage and they hate their husband and they hate their house and they hate their life. And then they have a woman’s version of a midlife crisis. That’s when a lot of them have affairs. It may be the husband’s fault, if he’s a real jerk. But it’s just as likely to be the woman’s own inherent character finally coming out and becoming visible.

The husband often doesn’t know what hit him. All of a sudden his marriage is falling apart when he thought everything was fine. She just hit her limit of being “nice” and not expressing her own actual feelings and living her own life, and now she’s outta the marriage, even if her husband really is a decent guy. But if the husband doesn’t have the emotional maturity to handle it, he may wash up on the shores of the Red Pill movement raging about “crazy women.”

Oh, and yes, I think a lot of the guys that end out as MGTOW attract narcissistic women because they themselves are narcissists, and birds of a feather flock together.

When a man comes of age (30+) when does the ‘pump and dump’ lifestyle get old? Not to mention the serious consequences on its own. Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned but isn’t the body supposed to be sacred and the act supposed to be .. uh somewhat special?

To make a “lifestyle” of that, seems empty and shallow, many catch STD’s, accidental pregnancies, no matter how much they try to protect themselves from it.

Plus, children everyday are being born without fathers.

I don’t understand how anyone sustains a lifestyle like that for very long.

No, it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. And it’s a young man’s game. At 30 or 40 the looks start to fade and the babes stop looking. Unless you have money. Lots of money. But even with money, eventually all the other problems you mention start crowding in, and there’s a crash of one sort or another.

Hi Lee, you brought up a great point about marraige, connection, being “hard wired” inside of us. This is critical for men to understand this (and esp) men who run across mgtow as well. Why? Well…

The better points of MGTOW, do teach men ‘they are the prize’, and they shouldn’t allow women to dictate their worth. Hmmm ok.. thats good. Many men do have no clue what their worth is, and often times women don’t what a truly good man is much less how to treat them. So this message, while important for men, can also be tricky. Especially, when they say, you are the prize” and oh.. btw, “don’t prioritize women”

Hmm.

It’s not breaking news that half of what men do to be attractive, is to attract a women, or a woman to spend their life with. And so do women.

You wouldn’t be human if you didnt want to feel loved, wanted, etc. The man also works hard, because he wants to feel Accomplished within himself, but ultimately someday take care of a family, necessities, fun times, great memories, etc.

But this is just because a man should love himself, focus on his goals, does not also mean that he should not strive for love, relationship, marriage, etc. again many men do this instinctually.

I personally believe that women naturally motivate men to strive to be even better men. (In fact, many married men speak, as if they couldn’t imagine life without their wife, or loved ones.) Personally, as much as I like “me time” work, sports, reading, etc it still could never outright ‘replace’ my wife/family.

Maybe I’m wrong. But mgtow appears to sell a story that men should live to be so selfish, that they “should” be comfortable alone with their own company. This includes living alone/without women. (Do no cohabitate/marry is the idea.) Not for days. Not months. But a lifestyle.

You’ll often hear: “Nothing compares to fishing, vacations, I’m Retiring young” As if to imply all these ‘fun things’ ‘replaces’ a life with love, a wife, family, etc )

Now, I realize some men prefer no relationships. I personally don’t understand it, but if that’s what works from them, great.

However, it is a completely different thing when they push, persuade, and even shame men into being MGTOW. That is not the innocent defensive “reaction” to feminism as they try to portray. Some don’t realize but mgtow messages don’t only target scorned men. The goal also seems to recruit, and even push ANY man to go mgtow mode.

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Also, mgtow content can easily pop in your YouTube feed which is likely how many men stumble into it. I think Mgtow hook men into it because plenty of good men do at times feel taken-for-granted-ATM’s. And women often times will roll their eyes at men, when they start about not feeling appreciated. Not gold digger types… but it does seem common for women to expect/see men providing for them as a mandatory “job” and make the advances, without much appreciation for it.

One of my acquaintances called off his engagement due to this. He believed he was a very good man who went out of his way, to show appreciation to his woman but that it wasn’t returned in nearly the same way. He was already mildly feeling this way for awhile. But the mgtow messages pushed him over. He mentioned that she wasn’t treating him bad or abusive.. but that she also didn’t care much either, and that all the good things he did didn’t seem to really matter much. Says he didn’t want to end up like most men do and agreed mostly with mgtow saying that the majority of American women these days are moreso entitled with expectations. He said he doesn’t hate or resent women. He’s just accepted it.

Sort of the way this video briefly describes. (Note: contains some foul language.)

Thanks for your further thoughts. I added a warning before the video to take care of your concerns. (WordPress doesn’t allow users to edit their comments after they’re posted.) The occasional expletives are incidental to the main message of the video, which I think is good.

Ok, again my apologies. I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. I do think the message is very much worthwhile.. Thankyou for taking the time with such thoughtful detailed replies to my posts. I read a few of those links you posted and they are very unique and enlightening as well. I hope for the discouraged men out there, that may find these posts help them to gain a better clarity.

You’re welcome. No problem. “Colorful” language doesn’t really bother me as long as it’s not intentionally insulting. And the warning will let people know in case such language is offensive to them.

Annette and I put these articles out there specifically so that there will be some thoughtful and helpful material for people who are struggling with some of these big issues in life. At least some people are finding them, since we’ve been averaging about 1,500 hits per day for several years now.

Do you think men these days should go as far not to ‘prioritize’ women and instead focus on themselves.

The context, is tricky being that both Men and women naturally strive for a marital type relationship when they come of age as you mentioned.

In fact, much of what men do, is to prepare himself for that sort of relationship. I try to imagine a life where men truly deep down feel fufilled long term (only) working on goals, taking vacations, single life without a loving companion/meaningful relationship.

I was always taught not to be selfish. Take responsibility. That it’s about more than just you. Which is also what marriage, and family, is about. I don’t see what could be more important than that.

We are to take care of ourselves to put ourselves in a position to take care of others.

God, not our spouse, is to be our primary relationship in life.

Our spouse is our primary relationship with other human beings.

A sound marriage adds to rather than takes away from accomplishing our purposes in life.

On Point 1, yes, we are preparing ourselves for marriage. We’re also preparing ourselves to be useful in the world. Doing the best job of both of these means developing our own best potential. This means not only gaining skills and knowledge, keeping ourselves healthy, and so on, but also enjoying R&R to let our mind and body relax and de-stress, and to build good times of enjoyment and fun that become part of a positive character.

On Point 2, as I said previously, doing God’s will should always be primary in our life. And specifically, doing whatever it is that God put us here to do. That will involve doing something we are well-suited for, that we enjoy, and that contributes to the overall well-being of the human community. No romantic relationship should pull us away from that. If it does, it’s not a good and healthy relationship (see Point 4).

On Point 3, among human relationships, our relationship with our spouse should be at the top of the totem pole. Going out for a beer with the guys does not trump taking care of a sudden situation with our spouse. Of course, if our spouse is continually creating drama that disrupts all of our other relationships, once again, that is not a good and healthy relationship, and it needs to be shut down. Most likely by getting out of that relationship.

On Point 4, if a marriage isn’t building up both partners and making them better at what they do, and at being their own best self so that they can excel at their calling in life, once again, that is not a good and healthy relationship. Married partners are meant to be partners, helping and supporting one another. Sometimes this may involve friction when one or the other or both are heading down a mistaken path or doing something stupid. But keeping one another on track is one of the purposes of a marriage. The best ideal of marriage is that the two become one in mind and heart, and pursue common goals together, or with one another’s support.

In short, I don’t think a man should wrap his life around a woman, nor do I think that a woman should wrap her life around a man. Those relationships can work. It is very common for a woman to wrap her life around a man. If that’s what floats their boat, I’m not going to stand on the sidelines and snipe. But the best ideal, I believe, is for a man and a woman to be equal partners in life, traveling forward together on a common path.

I know I’ve referred you to these articles before, but here are a couple that cover some of the above points:

Well in case you haven’t noticed which you should take a good look around you since the women of today have really changed from the past unfortunately. Feminism is all over the place today, and it is getting much worse since there are so many women that are real feminists and hate us men so very badly as well. After all, i really don’t expect women to Curse at us men for no reason at all when many of us single men are looking for a very serious relationship today. Just by saying good morning or hello to a woman now has become so very dangerous for us,especially when we see a woman that we would really like to meet. Most women today just really hate us men since i had been Cursed at already by quite of few of them, and even other friends that i know as well. Gee wiz, it is really getting very difficult for many of us good single men just to find love today. Why is that? Most women in the past were never ever like this at all, and most women in fact were Real Ladies and the very complete opposite of today altogether. They really are the ones that have no manners and personality at all these days, and i really think that a lot of these women have been very badly hurt by the men that they were with at one time. And now they really think that all of us men are no good at all which isn’t true.

Once again, if these are the types of women you are continually meeting, I would suggest looking in the mirror and assessing your own character and personality. There must be some reason why you’re continually drawn to that type of woman. I talk to women all the time, and they don’t curse at me, and they don’t hate me, and they have plenty of manners and personality. If you’re not meeting good women, it may be that you’re not as good a man as you think you are. Correct your own attitudes and behavior, and sooner or later you’ll find the good woman that you are seeking.

“Once again, if these are the types of women you are continually meeting, I would suggest looking in the mirror and assessing your own character and personality. There must be some reason why you’re continually drawn to that type of woman.”
Sounds like victim blaming to me. Funny how, according to feminism, if X woman meets Y sample of men with Z selection of personality traits, the fault lies men. But if X man meets Y sample of women with Z selection of personality traits, the fault once again lies with men.

But “victim blaming”? If a man makes advances on a woman, and she responds negatively, the man is a “victim”?

Wow. Such pampered men.

But to your main point, no, Red Pill and feminist dogma to the contrary notwithstanding, it doesn’t matter what sex an abuser or an abuse victim is. Abusers are responsible and culpable for their behavior whether they are male or female. The abuse is not the fault of the victim.

Meanwhile, victims need to take steps to protect and defend themselves from abuse whether the victims are male or female. This includes asking the question, for repeat victims of abuse, “Why do I keep getting involved with this sort of man / woman?” And then taking responsibility for making the personal and life changes required to break that pattern of falling into the hands of abusers time after time.

However, getting rejected by women is not being a “victim,” nor is it “abuse” for women to reject men they’re not interested in. Men do not have some sort of “right” for women to love them, such that if a woman fails to love a man who approaches her, she is “abusing” him.

If a man keeps getting rejected by every woman he’s attracted to, he can:

blame the women and decide that all women are jerks (this seems to be the general Red Pill response), or

take responsibility for his own love life, and consider what changes he needs to make to for things to work better for him romantically.

These changes may involve looking elsewhere for women who are more compatible with him. And they may involve becoming a better man, and not being such a crybaby about women.

In my experience, too many Red Pill men are self-centered and immature. They think they’re God’s gift to women, and they can’t understand why women don’t love them. Sure, some of them actually are victims of devious, gold-digging women. But even those ones would do better to look in the mirror and consider what changes to make in their own life so that they don’t get involved with that sort of woman again.

You’ll never get anywhere by blaming women for all of your problems. Take responsibility for your own life. It works better, and it’s the right thing to do.

I am one whom is currently going MGTOW. But I am not new to the idea of it, nor how it started. I visited its sites years ago. Back when it was fairly new. And it was indeed a sight for what was known as “Confirmed Bachelors.”

They had no hate for women, but also had no interest in them either. What they fought against is one of the statements you have given. “Be a man.”

However each person may have a totally different view of what being “a man” is. On a flip side to your statement, “Be a man,” some are quite sick of others pandering to them on what to do and why. I use “pandering,” for there is a level of self indulgence by some to tell others how they should live their lives, as if they got the right answers, and those not doing it that way, is wrong.

Again, those whom started MGTOW are sick of that. They don’t care what others think on what makes a man, a man. Or even if they should be seen as a man at all, in the eyes of others.

And part of what others have told them is, they are no man if they can’t snag a wife for themselves, and start a family. It is said by many, that a guy is not a man if he doesn’t contribute to society, and he is not doing that if he don’t have a wife and kids.

But that is not the case. Not by the views of those that started MGTOW. Many of them can get a wife and afford to have kids, they just don’t want all of that. They would rather enjoy what they work for, rather than give it up as others may tell them to. That is, giving it up to some wife and kids.

Those whom started MGTOW also stated they don’t want to see those that are crying over haven been in bad relationships to say they are MGTOW, when in fact they wish they had a girlfriend but feel they can’t, or are just bad at it. Sadly for those who stared it, that is what many new guys are doing.

It is much on how modern feminists has hijacked the name “feminist,” but don’t support the original ideals behind it. It is sick how the new “feminist,” misuse the word they took. It can make some men hate women in return, and that is not right. That is not what the original feminists wanted at all.

Modern MGTOW are not like those whom stared it either, and have their own agenda. That is also how the term “Red Pill,” came along and was added to it. Not the Idea of the original MGTOW. They would never have started such a thing.

I will admit I am partly part of the newer MGTOW group, taking my “Red Pill.” But I don’t hate women. I fully support the old feminist ideals, wile hating the new man hating ideals of the new so called feminists, whom are not real feminists at all, in my eyes.

Yes, I don’t hate women at all, nor do I blame them for my problems. Part of my problems is how I feel at times, and much of that has a lot to do with me being strait male. So, what I hate, if anything, is my own developed desire for having a women in my life. Not women personally. I know that they are not in any way at fault for me having desire. It’s just how I am.

But I don’t like how I am treated by them at times either. That is not the same as hating them, so don’t say I do hate them.

How I have been treated by them has been a constant pattern by each one I have been in contact with for the sake of getting to know them. One pattern I wish to avoid in my life from now on. I have seen it for about the past 25 years by well over 200 women I have tried to interact with. I just don’t appeal to them enough, for them to care about me as I may wish them to.

The last one I was with I broke up with twice over the same thing. And she told me things have changes, and would be better the second time. No, it was still the same as before.

My past experiences with them, have left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak. And being in my 40’s I don’t crave them as much anymore, and can better see how I am better off without them in my life as a personal companion. Working with or for a woman is just fine to me. I just no longer wish to be with one as a companion.

One thing I see as troubling with your post, is how you generalize MGTOW, and those whom are in it, far too much. It is a bad-bad, and shameful thing to do.

But considering what has been posted about it of late, I’m not surprised at all to come across such a post as this one. The internet is not exactly a strait forward path to truth about much of anything. Mostly with all those pesky personal opinions popping up everywhere, mucking up the hunt people may have for any real info on a given subject. >.>

Truth is important to look for, as hard as it can be to come across at times.

Just try to remember why MGTOW started. It’s was not for those whom feel they can’t get a women, it’s for those whom was not interested in having one in the first place. There hate is not for women. It is of being called “not a man,” for not having a wife and kids in his life, and hate being made to think he should be a man in the eyes of others, in how others think a man should be to, be a man.

I would say, part of that is why many have adopted the name MGTOW as I am. You and others can say I am “no man” in your eyes as to how I choose to live, spend my free time, and my money. But by me going MGTOW, is just me saying, I don’t care about such opinions, and am not letting such opinions influence any part of my life anymore, as I had for a time.

Opinions on such a subject will vary, person to person, after all. Everyone has theirs. And I know I have mine. ^.^

I agree that being a man does not mean snagging a wife and having kids. It’s every man’s own choice whether or not he wishes to be married and have children. Some choose to be single. As I said in the article, I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is men blaming women for their problems. The heading of the final section of the article, in which I say “be a man,” is “Men must take responsibility for themselves.” That is true whether or not a man is married. Being a man means taking responsibility for your own life rather than blaming everyone else and making your life everyone else’s responsibility.

If, for a MGTOW, that means not being in a relationship with a woman, no problem. Forget about women, stop bellyaching about evil feminists, and live your life the way you want to live it.

Is it going to be easy? No. When has living on this earth as a true man ever been easy? No one is going to hand you your dream life on a silver platter. If you want a good life, you’re going to have to man up and do the hard work. That’s all I’m saying.

If you want to blame women for all of your problems and all of the world’s problems, go for it. But a real man doesn’t blame his problems on women, or on anyone else at all. A real man takes responsibility for his own life and his own problems, and does the hard work of dealing with them himself. That is true whether or not he chooses to be in a relationship with a woman.

You have to understand that many of us good single men that are trying to meet a good woman to have a serious relationship with, and now we have to be very careful of sexual harassment since most of these single women today are just looking to get many of us men in trouble for No Reason. So just saying good morning or hello to a woman today is very risky now for many of us men unfortunately. A lot of these women today are certainly a lot different from the past. So we really have No Reason to blame ourselves for this mess since i know friends that are very much having the same problem as well. You really aren’t that smart at all if you keep blaming many of us men for these type of women that are the real problem today, and Not many of us men that keep meeting the Wrong Women all the time unfortunately.

If that is how you view of women, then you might as well give up trying to find a “good woman.” You apparently do not believe that there are any good women anymore. So why do you keep trying to find one?

Once again, a real man takes responsibility for his own life, and doesn’t blame his problems on women.

Lee, i have just one more honest question. Why are you protecting many of these women today that aren’t that innocent at all? And now that many of these women today have a career which they really believe they’re all that too. Well guess what, they’re not all that since they really will only want the very best of all and will never settle for less. Another question, How come back in the old days most women were Real Ladies and the very complete opposite of today altogether? Most women back then were very old fashioned and raised by good parents as well, so it wasn’t all about money in those days since both men and women hardly had any money at that time and were struggling just to make ends meat. This is why our family members had no trouble at all finding love with one another in those days since it was a very different time back then as you can see. This is why feminism is cancer today caused by these women in the first place. It really amazes me how much different most women were back in the old days which today unfortunately they really do suck. If women had been just like the old days which many of us men would have definitely found love ourselves with no problem at all either. As i can see that you were very lucky and blessed when you met your wife looking at your picture above since your wife was nothing at all like most of these women are today. So most of these women are the very real excellent reason why so many of us single good men can’t find a good woman today that will be able to Accept us for who we really are. And notice that i said the word Accept, which most women can’t do at all these days unfortunately. That is why the women back in the past were the very best of all compared to these real awful ones that we have everywhere now. Just telling it like it is since the times have really changed today, especially with all these reality shows that we have on today as well as the media that has really corrupted many women now to really hate us men altogether thanks to feminism.

That’s really more of a statement than a question. But I’ll respond anyway, with another question and statement:

What makes you think that women were so much better in “the good old days”? Were you actually alive then to see how “wonderful” things were then between men and women? Or did you get your idea of “the good old days” from old movies, which romanticized a very difficult and brutal past by having movie stars play idealized characters?

If you read history instead of watching old movies, you’ll find that men and women back then weren’t any better than they are today. In fact, in general, there are far more good men and women in the world today than there were in the past.

There is a nostalgic fantasy of “the good old days” among many men today who never actually lived in those times that they think were so great. But the reality was that the past was full of oppression, racism, sexism, and all of the other evils that we are today finally beginning to face and overcome.

It may look externally as if women were “Real Ladies” back then, and men were “Real Men,” but that’s because society had degenerated so far that women were considered only slightly higher socially than slaves, they were generally not given much, if any, education, and they were blocked from most honest means of supporting themselves, so that they became dependent upon men. They “stayed in their place” because not doing so generally meant either being killed or being forced into prostitution. Their character was no better than the character of women today. They just had to “behave themselves” due to external strictures that in fact, prevented them from developing into “Real Women.” But behind the scenes they schemed just as much as women do today in order to assert their own will despite their low and dependent position in society.

Even in the Bible, women never really conformed to today’s conservative Christian ideal of meek, demure, obedient “Ladies” who were subject to their husband’s will, and lived only to serve him. Yes, that was what they were supposed to do. But the wives of powerful biblical men such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were anything but “Real Ladies.” They were, in fact, forceful characters who asserted themselves and changed the course of biblical history. About that, see:

The halcyon past in which all women were good, loyal, loving servants to their husbands is just a myth in the mind of men today who can’t deal with the fact that women are finally becoming real women, because the social and religious strictures that held them down in the past are being swept away.

The other thing that kept women down in the past was that divorce was socially and religiously frowned upon, making it very difficult to leave one’s husband (or wife) once the marriage was recognized. This meant that even people stuck in bad marriages usually stuck it out anyway, because the alternative was social and financial ruin. But those marriages held together by external pressures were not any better than marriages today. In fact, in general, they were considerably worse. Men continued to beat their wives with no repercussions unless they were feckless enough to break a bone or cause serious damage to their wife’s face, in which case the community would punish the man. But as long as nobody saw the results of his beatings, he was free to brutalize his wife without penalty. Both men and women also committed adultery fairly often, but they kept it hidden and pretended it didn’t happen due to the same social and religious strictures that would make it disastrous for the adultery to become publicly known. Meanwhile, contrary to the ideal of the pure virgin young women of marriagable age, it was very common for girls and young women to be molested and raped, or given away as child brides. In the Bible, if a woman wasn’t already married or pledged to be married to another man, the “penalty” for raping a woman, even if she were only a child, was that the man must marry her and pay her father the bride price, and he was not allowed to divorce her. There was nothing like the “purity” that Christian conservatives attribute to biblical times. See: “Is Sex Before Marriage Forbidden in the Bible?” These same biblical “ideals” of sex and marriage continued throughout many cultures around the world, and are still practiced in some backwards cultures today.

The whole idea that there was some wonderful time in the past when women were “Real Ladies” and men were “Real Men” is just a myth.

The reality is that women today are generally far better than they were in the past. Now a woman can get an education, have a career, and develop herself as a woman. She doesn’t have to put up with a mean and brutal man beating her up because she doesn’t serve his every wish and whim. She can become a true equal partner to a man, because finally she has the same opportunity to develop herself, her character, and her abilities that a man does. In fact, men also can become far better men than they could in the past, because the old social and religious restrictions that kept men down as well are now being removed.

Now, whether a woman or a man becomes a good person depends mostly upon their own choices and actions. Despite idealistic notions that we are all born good, the reality is that we are all born mostly wrapped up in our own self and our own desires, pleasures, and pains. If women seem “selfish” today, it’s because that’s how we’re born. Men are the same way. To become a good man or woman, we must make a conscious choice to leave behind that old, natural self-centeredness, and develop ourselves into a good, thoughtful, self-responsible person. If we don’t make the effort to do that, both men and women will remain selfish jerks, each in their own way. See:

The irony is that “women today” are also very often looking for “a good man,” and are having trouble finding one. That’s because the “good men” today are just as self-absorbed as the women. These foolish men think that just because they have a penis, women should be fawning all over them, and tripping over themselves to “love” them, which, for these silly, undeveloped men, means serving his every wish and whim, never contradicting him, and of course, giving him all sorts of great sex. In other words, these “good men” are living in a fantasy land in which they think they can have a “Real Lady” without doing the work of being a “Real Gentleman.”

If you’re having trouble finding a good woman, what you need to do is look in the mirror, and then do the hard work of becoming a man who has the character to be worth the while of a woman of good character. I could extend this reply much longer with explanations about this, but instead I’ll refer you to two more articles. If you don’t read any of the other articles I link to above, I would highly recommend that you read these two, and begin the process of extracting yourself from the nostalgic fantasy world in which you are now living. Then do the hard work of becoming a Real Man so that you can be a true match for a Real Woman.

There are plenty of good women out there. But you’ll never be able to have a relationship with one of them as long as you continue in your current faulty attitudes about men, women, and relationships. Here are the articles for you:

1) Porn. Constant, unlimited by the virtues of internet, this has many men living unfocused, with low drive, but at the same time more lustful than ever, wanting to mate with every women (or every women they consider attractive) in the world. This last point obviously leads to frustration, as in reality, you just can´t mate and have sex that easily. There´s also the reality that porn induces men to solitude (for masturbation purposes), which alienates them, turning them into beta men, afraid of women, awkward around them, etc.

2) Women are becoming entangled with conflictive and negative masculinity traits themselves. That is: they are being corupted the way men were when they had all the power by themselves. They will lie, retaliate, fight, attack like men, but with the added dose of their own negative femenine traits (manipulation, playing the weak victim, mind games, gaslightning, etc).

3) Marriage (monogamy) is obviously not working like it used to. It is creating a toll in mental health around the planet. You are just being naive if you think there are tons of 60+ years marriages that just were happy all the time. All of them have times of tension, and that tension is “infelidelity, cheating”. My point is the expectation of trad monogamic marriage is unrealistic and that causes the main conflict.

4) Men nowadays are isolated, shamed in ther masculinity and laugh about their problems. The culprit is both men and women (culture, I should say, then), A typical example is that a too close male friend, starts the whole “homosexual” suspicacy and according shaming, when in reality, male need brothers to talk about their emotions or their doubts or their sufferings as much as any women. Women are men are not that different in this department: human beings going through trials. Mgtow and similar movements are finally becoming a support for the male trials.

5) Women (and this is connected to point #1) are becoming way to empowered just because of their sex appeal. This along with financial independence and a society that (besides crimininals) “protects” them viciously is making women a lot more abussive than before (again, similar to abussive men). Indeed, is beta men the culprit of giving that much attention and power to women just because of their looks.

6) This connects with narc/borderline personality disorders, which again, you completely ignore, when in fact are crucial to understand the modern situation: these disorders are becoming much more typical in women, and it has, again, a lot to do with the poor mental health of humans in general. Mentally ill parents lead to mentally ill children.

So, while Mgtow and RedPill movement, obviously includes a lot of reports and anecdotes that tells us about a growing hate towards women, their main points against marriage, increasingly bad spoiled self entitled abussive women, and critique against the legal system is very valid.

Having said that, I think we agree in that , yes, every man should take women out of a pedestal and start living their own life the fullest. Sex and relationships with women should be a side effect, of how much we men love ourselves in the first place.

Good luck with your marriage (have fun not looking at other women, or manouevering through your natural desires to mate with someone else, also have fun mantaining your woman with you if, God forbid, you happen to lost your financial and social power).

Yes, you and I can agree that men should not put women on a pedestal, but should see and treat them as regular human beings, with both virtues and flaws, just as men are regular human beings with both virtues and flaws.

And yes, we can agree that each person should live his or her life to the fullest. This is the only way that any relationship with another person can achieve its fullest potential. If we stand around waiting for someone else to make our life good, exciting, fulfilling, and so on, then we’ll either be standing around forever, or we’ll be sorely disappointed when other people fail to make our life great. It is our job to make our own life good. And if we can then find and partner with another person who has the same attitude about life, then together the two can accomplish much greater things than they could alone.

Thanks also for your well-wishes about my marriage. I am of an age and attitude that even when my wife and I are having our conflicts and struggles—they happen in every marriage—I have no interest whatsoever in being with anyone else. But that’s an issue to take up in response to your third point. So let’s dig into your particular points:

1. Pornography does not consume men. Men consume pornography. Any man who has a serious problem with pornography taking over his life has some serious work to do in breaking his porn addiction and changing his life. Pornography does not make our choices for us. We make our own choices, including about using pornography. Any man who blames his problems on pornography is just making excuses. He is not being a man. Being a man means running our own life and making our own decisions. For more on pornography, please see:

2. Yes, now that women have more power, they are showing more corruption, just as when men had far greater power than women, men also showed far greater corruption. It’s not that power corrupts, as the common saying goes. It’s that people who are morally corrupt will show that corruption in far greater measure when they have power than when they don’t. This applies to women just as much as it does to men. Meanwhile, both women and men who are not morally corrupt are not corrupted by power, but use greater power to accomplish greater good. For more on this, please see:

3. As a matter of fact, I have seen numerous 60+ year marriages that were good, close, and loving, including the marriage of my own parents. (See: “When Death is a Celebration.”) This does not mean there was no conflict in those marriages. Where there are human beings, there will be conflict. The issue is how we work out our conflicts. In a good marriage, the conflicts lead to change and growth both in each partner and in the marriage. And no, not all married people engage in “infidelity cheating” when they are in conflict with their spouse. Some do, of course. But others simply feel a great pain and sadness at the sense of separation from the one they love. This motivates them to do the work of overcoming that separation and moving even closer to their partner in marriage. For a related article, please see:

4. Does it really matter what other people think about you? If you want to be an “alpha,” forget about what other people think. Forget about their “gay-shaming.” Just get on with your life. If you’re not gay, who cares if people think you are? You know who you are. Besides, fewer and fewer people today think it is shameful to be gay. See:

5. Any man who marries a woman just for her looks deserves whatever he gets. Sure, many women use their sexuality to get what they want. And many men have made Faustian bargains with such women in which the man gets the sex he wants and the woman gets the stuff she wants. Such relationships generally don’t end well. I have nothing against female beauty. In fact, I’m all for it! But if you want a good relationship with a woman, you’ll have to see beyond her looks into her character. You’ll have to make an inner connection with her as a person rather than a merely external connection with her physical appearance. Physical beauty fades with age. Good character gets better with age. For a related article, please see:

Have you heard of “the black pill” and the rising issue of inceldom in the West? I believe the “black pill” essentially claims that “women only care about looks” and “want ugly men dead,” and “women really desire promiscuity.”

All of this is yet another fine example of how we humans can convince ourselves of the most ridiculously false things if only we put our minds to it.

The irony is that the “incel” community started out as support forums for teenage boys and girls, and young men and women, who are awkward about romantic relationships. Unfortunately, over the years it got kidnapped by a virulent anti-woman crowd that has now ejected all the girls and women, and made the term “incel” so toxic that no one else wants anything to do with it.

In general, the current toxic “incel” community is made up of males who are:

young (under 30),

self-absorbed,

focused on sex,

unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives, and therefore

quite immature.

Though it’s still a relatively young movement, the general pattern is that young men grow out of “inceldom” in their 30s, if not before, as they begin to gain some maturity. Yes, there are some holdouts. Some people never grow up. But for the most part, this is a movement of young, immature men who have drunk the kool-aid of blaming women for all of their problems. It is a more virulent mirror image of the unbalanced parts of the feminist movement that blame men and patriarchy for all of the problems of women, and view all men as rapists.

Spiritually speaking, today’s incel and black pill community is a function of self-absorption (“self-love,” in traditional Swedenborgian terminology) and physical-mindedness, together with an unwillingness to engage in self-examination and self-correction, or in traditional Swedenborgian terminology, “repentance” and “shunning evils as sins.”

Part of it is just a function of being young and immature. We do not start out spiritually oriented, thinking of others first. Rather, we start out self-absorbed, thinking of our own comfort and pleasure first. The process of “regeneration” is the process of growing out of this state of self-love and “love of the world” (another traditional Swedenborgian term), and replacing it with a state of love for the neighbor and love for the Lord. This process is not instantaneous; it takes many years of self-examination, repentance, reformation (re-forming ourselves), and regeneration (being reborn as a new person).

For some people this process of growing up spiritually starts at a young age. But for many, if it starts at all, it doesn’t start until well into adulthood. Meanwhile, the bulk of teenagers and young adults, whether male or female, are generally focused on themselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean being a narcissist. It can also mean focusing on one’s own troubles and woes, or engaging in continual self-flagellation. It may not look “selfish” in the usual sense of that word. But whatever form it takes, the focus is primarily on one’s own self, one’s own experiences, one’s own feelings, and so on. The world revolves around me and my greatness or my terrible woes. That’s why I’ve come to prefer the term “self-absorbed” as a more generally descriptive term for this spiritually immature state.

When we’re young, being self-absorbed isn’t necessarily a bad thing. During our childhood and youth we do need to focus on our own growth and development. And before we are able to take care of ourselves, we do need to let our adult caregivers know when we’re hungry or tired or hurt or sick.

However, once we reach self-responsible adulthood, our focus is supposed to begin a shift from thinking primarily about our own health and well-being to thinking more and more about the well-being of others, and about God’s purpose for us.

For people who are not ready or are unwilling to make this transition (it happens only by conscious choice), it is necessary to find some outside object to blame all their troubles on. An unwillingness to be reborn spiritually is also an unwillingness to take responsibility for our own lives, and an unwillingness to engage in self-examination to identify our own faults and character flaws—which we would then have do do the hard personal work of correcting. People who are not ready, or who are unwilling, to engage in this hard work will find something outside of themselves to blame all their problems on, in order to avoid taking responsibility for those problems themselves. (Taking responsibility for our own life is a necessary condition for being a mature adult.)

In today’s incel community, the chosen “whipping boy” is a girl. Women and feminists are, in this distorted worldview, the cause of all the problems of the males of the species. And with the magnifying power of the Internet, for young males who drink this particular kool-aid, there is a very serious rabbit hole that swallows their brains and turns them more and more virulently and violently anti-woman. This continues until one day most of them come to their senses, and re-start their arrested process of growing up to emotional maturity.

As for being ugly and awkward, certainly that is a challenge to be overcome. But men (and women) who have grown up to mature adults take a realistic view of their “challenges,” and do the work necessary to have a good life anyway. Many of them even get married and live happily ever after.

The primary antidote to all of this, besides the aforementioned process of personal repentance, reformation, and regeneration, is to adopt principles and goals in life that involve loving and serving one’s fellow human beings. These two—leaving our self-absorption behind and focusing our life on loving and serving others—go hand-in-hand. As we stop focusing so much on our own greatness or on our own woes, and start thinking about how we can do good things for other people, whether in our job or in our household, neighborhood, and community, the immaturity and self-absorption begin to fade away, along with the blackness of the black pill that we may have swallowed earlier.

Though people who engage in this shift of focus from self to other may not be intending to get a partner, and may not even think they will ever be able to engage in a romantic relationship, it is quite common for people who do the hard work of growing up and becoming emotionally mature to somewhere along the way, as if by chance, find someone to love, who loves them in return.

Self-absorption is far uglier than an ugly face.

Love and concern for other people is far more beautiful than a beautiful face.

Thanks for the reply. Even without knowing how Western society works, one can tell the “black pill” isn’t exactly “the hard truth,” as it relies on the belief that “all women are like that.”

Going off on a tangent here, you mention that youths are in a state where they’re naturally more “self-absorbed” than adults. I assume this “self-absorption of youth” does not necessarily prevent youths who pass away from being able to reach higher heavens — like the 2nd and innermost — right? Otherwise it’d be not unlike the old Catholic belief that unbaptized infants are condemned to Limbo.

No. In fact, Swedenborg says that the bulk of the inhabitants of the highest heaven are infants and young children who have died. Though they are self-absorbed, this is not intentional on their part, so it is not held against them. It is overridden by the state of innocence in which they are. And the highest heaven is the heaven of innocence.

As we grow up, we pass from that state of simple, heart-centered innocence to a state of learning and developing the mind. This begins roughly at the start of our elementary school years. Children who die between five or six years old and the teenage years will likely settle in the middle, “spiritual” heaven due to their immersion in thought and learning.

Meanwhile, teens, especially older teens, are moving toward the practicalities of how to get along in this life, as they approach adulthood and the imminent need to support themselves. They are therefore, I think, more likely to settle in the lowest “natural” heaven, where the focus is on practical concerns and outward right living.

However, this may vary according to the character of the particular person.

Only when we reach self-responsible adulthood does our self-absorption begin to be charged against us if we persist in it rather than growing up and thinking of the well-being of others as much as of our own well-being.